


savage little hearts (will eat you whole)

by Yourwinedarksea (yourwinedarksea)



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Age Difference, Brothels, But no babies, Eventual Smut, F/M, Mentions of Underage, Prostitution, Size Kink, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, a few years, but no underage, but nothing happens, eventual tags:, mentions of rape/non con, over like
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:42:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22027255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourwinedarksea/pseuds/Yourwinedarksea
Summary: The brothel is loud and full of life. The glow of the torches spread along the room like the drip of sweat along his spine, slow crawling and too hot. He can feel the air like it’s a fog in his lungs, perfumed by smoke and sweat and sex; ale and food, laughter and moans, skin slipping over skin…It’s almost too much, but he breathes through his mouth, tasting the smoke and heat rather than smelling the press of bodies, the scents that speak more than any bargaining brothel owner or siren-voiced prostitute ever could.The inn had refused him and his coin, and he thinks of the sneer on the owner’s face and the way his wife had clutched her babe to her chest,Butcher,they’d said,we’ll not have your kind here.To the whorehouse,they’d said,like to like.He’d thought about making camp in the snow-covered forests around this city, but the ground was frozen with snow and the bite of winter is already a numb little tingle in the tips of his fingers. And for him to feel it— that was saying something of the cold pervading the night.or,Geralt doesn't need another Renfri or another Jaskier, but fate rarely cares for what menwant.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Original Female Character(s), Tissaia de Vries/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 253
Kudos: 763





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Currently obsessed with the Witcher and this idea wouldn't leave me alone so I had to get it out. Hopefully there's some interest! Let me know what you think/if you want to see more. Future chapters won't be so short, but I wanted to test the waters first :)
> 
> Main character starts out underage, but nothing happens until she's older, I like a little burn to the build up, it just makes things more worthwhile when things happen, imo.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

* * *

one

* * *

The brothel is loud and full of life. The glow of the torches spread along the room like the drip of sweat along his spine; slow crawling and too hot. He can feel the air like it’s a fog in his lungs, perfumed by smoke and sweat and sex, by ale and food. By laughter and moans, and skin slipping over skin like promises of something more.

It’s almost too much, but he breathes through his mouth, tasting the smoke and heat rather than smelling the press of bodies, the scents that speak more than any bargaining brothel owner or siren-voiced prostitute ever could.

The inn had refused him and his coin, and he thinks of the sneer on the innkeeper’s face and the way his wife had clutched her babe to her chest, _Butcher_ , they’d said, _we’ll not have your kind here._

 _To the whorehouse,_ they’d said, _like to like._

He’d thought about making camp in the snow-covered forests around this city, but the ground was frozen and the bite of the cold is already a numb little tingle in the tips of his fingers. And for _him_ to feel it— that was saying something of the cold pervading the night.

And so, he finds himself here, breathing through his mouth to keep some distance between himself and the mass of men and women and whatever else is his _like_ to the people of this city.

He’s barely scanned the brothel when a woman, draped in a low-cut, tight-bodice dress, presses herself up against him. She smells of salt and layers of perfume as she curves her arm through his. She’s dressed well, better than many brothels he’s visited over the years, and he wonders what this night will cost him. Even without a woman.

“Evening, _Witcher,_ ” she says, low and tipped with an interest that’s as weighted as the way her hand curves on his bicep. “Looking for some company?”

“A room. And a bath,” he grunts, resisting the urge to pull away.

The woman’s smile flickers at the edges, lips painted a bright red, like they can stain the smile on her face no matter the truth behind it.

If it were another night, he thinks, if the heat of the brothel wasn’t already stealing the last of his strength, if every inch of him wasn’t sore from his last hunt… he would add: _and you, of course._

But the heat is weighing on him and the sweat along his spine gathers and drips and makes fingertips burn as it chases out the cold. He has no energy to be entertained.

“The owner?” he says instead, and when she pulls away it’s with a huff of air, a puff of perfumed hair as she leads him further into the brothel, pass the bar and into a dark hallway.

“Chegund,” she says, leaning around a half open door. “There’s a Witcher here for a room. And a _bath_.”

“That’s it?” a male voice says from out of sight. “ _Dissapointing_ , Neery.”

Her shoulders tighten. “Who knows what pleases _Witchers_?”

The man huffs and mutters something; the woman steps back, her mouth tight, barely sparing Geralt another glance before she walks away.

“ _Who knows what pleases Witchers_ ,” the voice drawls as Geralt steps around the door. An older man greets him, a lean-cut of a man with skin like rough tree-bark and eyes as dark as burnt-oak. He grins, sharp-toothed. and lifts a gold-ringed hand to the chair in front of his desk. “You are a man, are you not, Witcher? With a cock an’ all?”

“Last time I checked.”

The man snorts, his grin tilting. “As I thought. Perhaps the wrong sort of woman than, hm? Or man, perhaps?”

“I’ve had a long journey.”

The man’s face doesn’t change, but a wrinkle deepens next to his eye. “You understand the rooms are often used for more than one weary traveller… the inn may be more your… _need_ , Witcher, than what I offer here.”

Geralt lifts his chin, meeting the man’s eyes.

“Ah,” the man laughs. “You went already, didn’t you?”

“I’ll pay whatever you require for my use of the room. And a _quiet_ night.”

The man lifts his hand, flicking it as if dismissing Geralt’s words. “A stupid businessman to refuse a patron, no? A room you shall have, then, Witcher, and a bath, if you want it. Though _quiet_ may not be within my power to promise. You come on the wrong night, I’m afraid, there won’t be much _quiet_ within these walls.”

A truth Geralt already knew; laughter and moans and perfume like skin over skin and sweat-slicked hands. There are all sorts of beasts in the night, but none more hungry than a man in a brothel.

He nods.

The man grins. “Then I’ll have your room prepared, Witcher, by the quietest girl I have.”

The door is a heavy chunk of wood that does its best to keep out the noise of the brothel but it only dulls it like it’s sunk beneath the surface of a river. But the room is large and there’s already a fire roaring and a copper tub in front of it, so Geralt will live with the noise, despite the desire for a quieter night of a hot bath and much needed sleep.

He’s barely set his swords and belts down on the table when there’s an almost too-quiet knock. The door creaks open even as he’s turning to face the intrusion, a scowl on his face.

A girl pushes in, carrying a copper jug that’s steaming and pushing a flush into her cheeks while the loose strands of hair that frame her face curl in the heat.

She’s young, _too young_ , he thinks, or at least looks it, pink-cheeked and thin-limbed, wearing a thin white dress that drapes off her narrow shoulders. It’s nothing fancy or expensive, but it’s still nicer than the clothing he saw downstairs, less revealing— or revealing in a different sort of way. The girl has obviously been dressed to be looked at; her hair plaited and knotted down either side of her face, like the Queen’s girl. _Pavetta_.

He’s annoyed by the thought, annoyed by being annoyed at all, one girl in a brothel is none of his concern.

“Is that all the water this business can spare?” he growls and doesn’t miss the flinch, the slosh of water in the jug, the steam that breaks and then rises again. The girl doesn’t look at him, instead he watches her square her shoulders, hears the little sound of a swallow.

He wonders how _new_ she is.

When she starts to pour, he almost wants to tell her not to bother, that he’ll wash himself with a cloth because it would take her three hundred trips to fill a tub that size with a jug like that—

But it’s in the noise of his own irritated thoughts and the stream of water echoing against the empty copper tub like a steady, little waterfall, that Geralt feels the faintest shiver of his medallion, and realises the stream of water isn’t stopping... the jug keeps pouring, the water still steaming as it fills the tub until the noise is a gentle sound of water into water, like a flow of a stream in a warm forest.

“Handy trick,” he mutters as he finishes undressing, unbothered by the girl in the room, knowing she won’t look anyway, not if that little echo of her heartbeat is as fast as he thinks it is.

He wonders again how new she is. Most women in these houses would have been told to try to seduce him into more, pull him into arousal until he was more than willing to drop a few more coins.

He hopes she doesn’t try, not that he’s worried about his own ability to say no, but because he doesn’t want to believe a girl that looks that young is already well used to selling herself that way.

He steps around her and into the tub, gritting his teeth at the burst of heat the spreads through his limbs from his feet until he’s submerged into the still rising water.

Her eyes flick to his; there’s no hiding how red her cheeks are, and he knows it’s not just from the steam rising from the tub or the warmth of the room. But the girl looks away, stares steadfastly back at the water pouring from the jug, her arm beginning to tremble from holding it up, he can only imagine the weight of it on her skinny arm.

He wonders if the girl has a touch of magic or if it’s the jug that’s charmed in some way. She looks normal enough, he reasons, but then, there are many sorts of magic and many more enchantments to change a face. His stomach tightens at the idea that she or _someone_ has chosen her to look this way. There’s something worse, he thinks, about the idea that she’s been _designed._

Not wanting to dwell on the questions in his head, he resolves that he needs no more strays, no more Renfris or Jaskiers or oaths he never wanted a part of.

There’s a cloth on the ledge of the tub and he grabs it, dunking it into the hot water as the stream cuts off. He glances at the girl, the silence loud in the wake of the water stopping and finds her holding out a bit of soap.

“I’m supposed to…” she trails off, the soap held lamely between them as she stares hard at his knee, pink and steaming, just above the surface of the water.

“I’ll manage,” he says flatly, nodding towards the door. “Tell the owner I appreciate the quiet. And the bath.”

The girl bites her cheek, her head turning towards the door, the copper jug hanging limply at her side. The silence, outside of the crackle of the fireplace, hangs heavy.

 _I’m supposed to_ , she’d said.

 _Damnit,_ he thinks.

“Fine,” he huffs, pushing out a heavy breath. “Sit. Be quiet.”

The girl glances at him, a quick flick of her eyes before she gives a sharp little nod and turns on her heel and _sits._

“Not—” _there,_ he thinks, but then, _where else, really?_ The bed? The table? The one chair he threw his clothing and weaponry over?

He grits his teeth, tilting his head back against the warm tub ledge and pushes out another breath.

For a long time there’s nothing but the slosh of water as he cleans himself, the crackle of the fireplace and their breathing.

His muscles ease and melt until he finds himself, heavy-lidded and staring at the ceiling listening to the girl’s heartbeat instead of the droning noise of the brothel beyond the walls of his room as the water cools around him.

He thinks he might be near sleep when he hears the girl shift, her dress a shiver of a sound over the wood floor, the sound of her hand touching the side of the tub and he creaks an eye open, the room painted in the dying firelight. The girl shifts, just slightly, glancing at him, her teeth sunk into her lip as she looks at him over the rim of the tub… her hand edging over the side of the tub until her fingers slip just beneath the surface and—

And the water warms, slowly but steadily in temperature until it starts to steam again and the girl pulls her fingers back easing herself to her feet and slipping out of the room as quiet as that shiver of her dress over the wood.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little note:
> 
> Firstly, absolutely amazed at the response to such a small first chapter and I can't thank you all enough, hopefully you like what's to come just as much!
> 
> Secondly, I know almost nothing about The Witcher except for the Netflix version, I won’t lie and say it wasn’t 200% all about a thirst for Henry Cavill as Geralt… because it was. But, I am like, not great at writing blind, so I bought the books and I’ve been doing some research(ie, the witcher wiki and videogame scenes/reviews/breakdowns) but seeing as I’m writing as I go I still really don’t know much, so I’m going to keep this as contained to the main characters as possible because this world is massive and I’m a poor writer who just… don’t got that kind of time. I’m going to make some stuff up, mostly places and creatures and probably some stuff to do with magic, it’ll be a mash up of Witcher things and mythology I know about. Hopefully it all works out :)

* * *

two

* * *

There are tracks in the snow, only one set, and he knows they’re not from the creature he’s tracking; they're small, _too small_ and his only comfort is that they’re still fresh.

But the snow falls heavy and thick like white ash blown from a dead fire, and his cloak is already soaked enough that he leaves it folded over a branch, hoping he’ll remember to circle back for it when he’s done.

He follows the tracks, his boots falling in the wake of each too-small track leading him deeper into the woods. He’s used to silence, used to the quiet of hunting alone, ears strained for that tell-tale growl or heartbeat or rumbling beastly belly… but in the snow, the frozen forest being buried deeper in white around him, there’s nothing but his own breathing, his own belly and the too-slow beat of his own heart.

It’s less comforting than it should be.

He feels half-deaf by the time his medallion hums against his chest, his ears stuffed by the silence when he feels the first shift of _something_ near him; no sound, no breath, just an _itch_ like the feeling of someone watching.

Not someone, he thinks, but some _thing._

But still, he follows the too-small tracks. His breath puffs, thick and white in front of him.

This time there’s no feeling, there’s a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye, like a shadow passing, a bit of black smoke from a flame; he keeps his eyes trained forward, knowing the Qiqurn will not be there if he looks, that there will be nothing there but falling, silent snow and dark, deep forest.

The itch grows until it’s a fingernail scratching at the nape of his neck, a little prick of a feeling… and that shifting-shadow creature is following him, just in the dark of the trees and out of sight. The tracks in front of him are fading, disappearing in the falling snow, but there’s a new sound now, another heartbeat, faint and distant but growing louder; a human one.

 _Come on,_ he thinks, as the shadow in the trees snarls, flickers like a dark cloud of smoke and barrels into him.

It’s a stupid plan, but then, when have his plans ever been anything other than him throwing himself into whatever dark things that come to meet him?

He lands heavily in the snow with a grunt, pushing back up to his feet and keeping his eyes trained anywhere but where he knows the creature is, circling him. His breath puffs in white clouds in front of him, controlled, waiting…

_Come on._

Another snarl, a low-rolling sound like jaws opening, starting somewhere deep in the belly as he gets closer to that human heartbeat.

 _Come on,_ he thinks and then lets himself hit the snow again, breath taken out of him as the Qiqurn lunges—

And Geralt rolls to his feet, following that shadow in the corner of his eye and forming a Sign even as he blinks through the dense white snow and into the darkness of the forest. The flame forms, bursting forward and the creature screams, high-pitched and uneven—

 _Got you,_ he thinks, even as the creature shakes off the flames, its form flickering and twisting. And this time, as it comes for him, Geralt meets him with his sword and the metal sings in the silence.

In between one lunge and snarling, snapping bite, he forms another Sign and lights his sword; the flames ignite, like a fire crawling along spilt oil, burning too bright in the dark. The heat singes his own skin, but the creature hisses and howls and screams— and meets him, sharp claw and tooth to hot fire and blade.

 _Got you,_ he thinks.

He already knew the creature hunted children, but the too-small bones on the cave floor still make his skin crawl… but the boy, unconscious and tucked in the far back corner behind some jagged rocks is a relief that eases him, just a little.

It’s no real fair trade, not really, not for the number of bones covering the ground, but Geralt will take it anyway; he scoops the boy up and has to fight the panic and the tears when the child wakes— until the boy understands that the man holding him is no beast.

 _Not a man, either_ , he thinks, but it’s a similar sort of trade. One beast for another, one boy for all those bones.

He goes back for the body of the Qiqurn after returning the boy to the little town that hired him, his mother a mess of tears, his father all but flinging payment in Geralt’s direction, his dismissal as clear as the clink of the coins in the purse.

The bones of the creature are good for many things, its blood, even more. And it takes him until dawn to break the beast apart, leaves the patch of snow around him black with old blood. It’s a gruesome scene, but a fresh snow starts to fall as he packs up and he wonders why there’s always such a difference in the feel of it, as the sun rises, as the sky lightens, each flake is less a weight of deafening silence and more a bit of the sky, fresh and clean to cover all the things that mar the earth.

When he reaches his cloak and then Roach, there’s a moment where he isn’t sure which way to go.

The nearest place for him to sell some of the remnants of the creature is Litvogur, the same unwelcoming northern city he’d just left the week before, but he thinks about continuing up north, finding some shelter in the mountains, resting for a night or two… maybe some small mountainside hovel will be more easily swayed by his coins than a larger city already familiar with a _Witcher_.

But he thinks about the bed in that brothel, about a bath and the—

 _Just the bath_ , he thinks, and looks down at the blood, drying brown beneath the crescent of his dirty nails that a quick scrub in fresh snow couldn’t quite get out.

_A bath, then._

There’s ale this time, and he takes it, even though he’s been awake all night and dirtier than the last time he was here. It’s sweetened by honey and lighter than anything he’s had in weeks; he wonders how a place this far north has something so southern.

The brothel looks entirely different in the light of late morning but it still has all sorts of women (and men) slipping into eager, waiting laps, the clothing less revealing but the hands slipping beneath them are no less willing to uncover the skin beneath.

He watches one man’s hand slip along a curvy thigh as the woman curls into his lap more, her lips coming to brush his ear, her voice, just low enough her words are like the honey in his drink, sweetly-tipped, sliding sweetly down.

The man palms her soft ass cheek and Geralt looks away, thinking about the coin in his purse and wondering if he has it in him to be entertained this time.

The thick man with the thick beard behind the bar looks at him with a narrowed eye. “If you want a day girl you’ll have to look less like a butcher, Witcher.”

He snorts into his cup, swallowing another mouthful of ale. Out of the corner of his eye, the barman nods at someone, tilting his head towards Geralt. He makes sure there’s no outward reaction in his own face, but his hand itches for the weight of the hilt of his sword— just as a woman slides up to him at the bar and he eases again.

She’s beautiful in that way that so many brothel women are; aware of each curve and curl of their bodies, each smile, the promising weight of heavy lashes lined in kohl waiting to be smudged.

(He thinks of Yennefer then, the way the heavy black on her eyelids would smudge the longer they spent in bed; he thinks he could marker passion by the spread of it, until he’d smudged her enough that she was bare in more ways than just her skin.)

He thinks about smiling back at the woman in front of him, about dropping his newly-acquired coin on the bar-top and taking her upstairs…

But he looks at his hand on the flagon of ale and the rot of guts on the sleeves of his leathers— he hasn’t heard a word the woman’s been saying, he realises.

“A room,” he says, looking back at the woman, still leaning next to him at the bar. “And a bath.”

The woman smiles, though her lashes are not so heavy as before. “Would you like a hand washing, Witcher? You do look terribly dirty, I’m sure we could be very… thorough.”

He doesn’t answer, just looks at her, waiting for her to understand the _no_ in his face. She sighs, giving him a quick smile, her eyes crinkle at the corners, better at the performance than the woman the night before, anyway.

“A room then,” she says, pushing off the bar and looking over her shoulder before turning back to face him, her smile edged with a sudden humour. “And I’m sure a bath can be easily arranged.”

It’s the same room as before, a fire already lit and starting to chase out the cold leaking in through the window and cold wood floors. He sets his bag of leather-wrapped bones and blood closer to the window, where a draft will keep them cooler and less likely to smell, and begins to peel himself out of his sodden cloak and outer layers.

The knock is… expected this time, and he isn’t sure what that tension in his stomach is until the door creaks open and a familiar, skinny frame steps into the room.

And _fuck_ if she doesn’t look even younger in daylight and that twist to his stomach settles into something he knows is disappointment. A defeated sort of anger like a rock weighing down his belly; the girl was not softened by firelight or Geralt’s own fatigue. She _is_ young; soft-cheeked with a youth still clinging despite the curve in her waist and the slope of her shoulders, bared in another white dress, a gauzy thing that he knows, really is meant to show off the skin beneath.

He hates that he thinks of the boy in the cave, that he can save however many children from however many snarling mouths, but there are so many different kinds of hungry beasts, and so many more children to feed them.

Neither one of them say anything, the copper jug in her hands steams her face and the dark-gold tips of her hair curl in the silence the pinker her cheeks get.

He’s sure the moment is just stretching into awkward when the door opens again and the woman from before steps in on a wave of perfume and a red-lipped smile, with a jug of ale in her hand.

“A proper drink, on the house, to start your stay with us. Did you have any interest in a meal…” she trails off, her voice lilting up in question, waiting for him to offer her a name to use, other than _Witcher,_ but Geralt offers nothing, leaning back against the round wood table and crossing his arms. Her smile widens, and she laughs. “I’ll send something up. Lalka will be more than happy to help you with _whatever_ you need—”

“But Chegund—” the girl starts, but the woman waves a hand, her smile sharp.

“Is sleeping off last night, as you well know.” She looks back to Geralt, waving the girl towards the tub. “I’ll see your meal sent up, Witcher. Ask for Valla before you leave and I’ll see you settled up.”

She leaves without waiting for an answer, the door shutting and leaving the girl standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, her hair frizzy now, her cheeks pink from steam and her lips pressed together.

She pulls in a breath and turns, heading towards the tub and the flow of the water hitting the empty copper tub is a loud noise to fill the quiet room.

Geralt grits his teeth, telling himself that there’s a reason brothels are only meant for nightly visits. Reasons you don’t come for a stay unless it’s just between the sheets. Reasons they aren’t fucking _inns._

“ _Fuck,_ ” he mutters and angrily tugs off the remainder of his clothes, dropping them in a pile, ignoring the tensing of the girl’s shoulders and the little two-timed uptick to her pulse. She steps away from the tub, her head carefully tilted away as he walks up behind her; a moment he almost finds funny in how fucking repetitious it is of the night last week.

She’s shorter than he remembers, barely reaches his chest as he steps around her and into the bath. There’s a film of oils on the surface, something that hazes the water, something scented that turns it murky and sweet-smelling—

He looks up at the girl, who’s cheeks are even pinker than before.

And he laughs. He can’t catch it, it slips out at the sight of her averted eyes, her flushed and blotchy cheeks—

The girl’s head jerks towards him, and her glare is nothing more than a back-alley kitten, a bit of fluff and fur and claws too little to do anything other than sting.

“Really?” he asks, the humour (and fatigue, he thinks, it must be part fatigue making this all so— _fucking unbelievable_ ) in his chest makes his words rougher than he means too, and the girl’s glare grows sharper. “Have you never seen a cock before? In a place like this?”

“I’ve seen a _cock_ before,” she spits, her hand tightening on the jug, and he swears she looks exactly like a kitten, her hackles rising. “Men are all too eager to show the _world_ their _cocks._ ”

He snorts another laugh. “That’s true enough.”

“I know it is.”

The humour fades as he realises the lack of _Witcher—_ at the end of her sentence; looking back down at the water, the way it blurs everything beneath in a way it didn’t the last time… the way her heart beats, quick and unsteady in her chest.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks, settling into the heat of the water and tilting his head against the ledge of the tub to look at her. “You can go, girl. I don’t need any help from you or your magic jug any more.”

Her jaw ticks. “I _can’t_.”

He lifts a brow. “Why?”

Her eyes are dark, he realises, a coppery sort of brown that narrows at him again. “Because Val is the _matron_ and she’ll— I just _can’t_.”

Their eyes hold for a heartbeat, and then another. He thinks about the way the girl’s heartbeat tripped when the woman had told her to stay, like she was _surprised._ The way the woman seemed so… _eager_ to offer him the girl in the first place.

The way the girl had said— _But_ _Chegund—_

The owner, he thinks, if he’s remembering the name the woman said last time, leading him into that backroom.

There’s a knock on the door and the girl’s eyes break away from his. She restarts like she remembers where she is and why she’s here; sets the copper jug on the floor next to the tub and goes to answer the door, taking the tray from the boy on the other side without a word. It’s laden with food, a rich smell of meat that makes his mouth water.

After the door shuts, with the boy sneaking a glance at the Witcher in the tub, Geralt watches the girl, braced under the weight of the tray, bringing it to the bathtub and setting it on a little table near his arm.

She stands there, curling her fingers into the flowing fabric of her dress, her eyes low. “I’ll be quiet. I promise… Like last time.”

Her eyes flick up to his, dark, _doe-eyed,_ he thinks, and wonders if that’s what does it, the thought of her at the tip of an arrow, waiting to be made a meal of. (Or the hope in them, he thinks, the fucking _hope._ )

She’s nervous, he can tell… but it’s nothing to do with _him._

It’s not his business, he thinks, _she’s_ not his business. But he can’t get the _no,_ out of his mouth.

He says nothing, and she must take the silence as the _yes_ it so obviously is because she turns and sits and leaves him staring at the back of her head, at the pale strip of her scalp from the part of her hair, curled and braided over either shoulder.

She’s got a skinny little neck and he thinks again about a doe in the woods— and closes his eyes, tilting his head more against the ledge and breathing in whatever oils are steaming up from the bathwater, and the smell of the meat, still warm by their side.

His stomach growls, so does the girl’s.

“Go ahead,” he sighs and then cracks open his eye when he can feel her looking at him. She holds out a leg of meat, still on the bone, the skin greasy and shining. He takes it, his hand dripping from the bath, watching the girl turn and settle again before reaching for a piece of sliced meat from the tray and popping it in her mouth.

Neither one says anything more.

He’s mostly full and dozing by the time he feels the girl’s fingers sneak over the edge of the tub again. He catches them without looking, feeling the jump of her pulse, the tensing in her body, the way she tugs back on instinct. His medallion warms, just a little.

“You have a few tricks, hm?”

The girl nods, trying to wiggle her fingers out of his, but even with his wet fingers, she can’t quite manage it.

He tightens his grip, a warning. “Lalka?” he asks, with a little frown, something about the name sits wrong, and he feels like he should know why.

She stops pulling, her voice tight and irritated when she finally speaks. “…That’s what they call me.”

He waits, but when the girl offers nothing more, he lets her fingers go, tilting his head up to look at her.

She shrugs, turning slightly and sinking her fingers back down the side of the tub until they just the tips touch the water.

Neither one says anything as she does… whatever it is she’s doing, but he wonders, as the water heats, if the room is getting colder or if it just feels like it next to rising temperature in the tub.

“Have you been trained to do that?”

The girl shakes her head, curving her arms up on the edge of the tub and resting her chin against it and blinking at him. “No, it’s just… tricks. Like you said.”

 _Hm,_ he exhales, watching the steam rising from the water, from the shiny-wet tips of her fingers.

“I practice a lot,” she says, her shoulders jerking with a shrug again, and she smiles, but it’s quick and not at all true. “Pretty sure it’s all most of them here think I’m good for.”

The why is on his tongue, the questions and curiosities, but the fire turns the girl into something too young, that doe in the forest at the edge of his blade, nothing more than meat for a hungry mouth. He thinks of the man’s hand on the woman’s thigh downstairs. Of kohl being smudged. Of the smell of a brothel.

“What were you hunting?” she asks, her voice light, her eyes looking somewhere near the window, where his pack lays, the cut-up bits and pieces of the Qiqurn.

“A Qiqurn,” he says lowly, watching her stare at the bag, wondering how she knew at all… but she looks back at him and drops her chin down again, her lips curling up.

“That’s a funny name.”

“Not a funny monster, likes kids.”

Her smile, whatever little edge of it was on her lips, dies. Quickly. “Oh.”

It goes quiet, the girl looks at the pack again. “What do you do with… all of that?”

“How do you know what’s in there?”

She frowns a little, a crinkle to her nose that makes her look even more like a kitten. “It smells.”

 _It doesn’t,_ he thinks, _not to most._

He makes a sound in his chest, nothing more than an acknowledgement. The girl waits, obviously too curious for her own good, should know better, he thinks, than to poke at strangers… but he finds himself answering anyway.

“The blood is used in potions, for all sorts of things. The bones can make people forget, at least for a while.”

The girl blinks, her head turning back to his bag. “Forget how?”

“They just… forget. The Qiqurn is part shifter, shifters often lure and steal thoughts. The bones do the same, they grind them up and put them into teas. There’s a lot of people who have things they want to forget, girl.”

“But it’s not permanent?” she asks, and Geralt narrows his eyes because the tick in her heart is something different, the lift in her voice… it's more than curiosity.

“Depends on the potency, I’d imagine.”

The girl nods, looking back at him, but her eyes dart to the bag again before she drops her chin down on her arms again. It goes quiet, he thinks the girl is going to stare at his scars, as they all do, but her eyes end up on the fire, and he finds himself watching her instead.

Her eyelids are heavy, and he wonders how he missed the way they’re tinged purple, that bruise of fatigue like a weight he’s well-familiar of.

Before he can stop himself, the words are out of his mouth. “How old are you?”

She blinks slow and heavy, her heartbeat easing more and more as she watches the flames. “Fifteen.”

He grits his teeth, pushing out a heavy breath; older than he thought, younger than he’d hoped.

“I think,” she says, tilting her head until it’s her cheek resting on her arm instead.

He frowns. _“You think?”_

She shrugs, and it shifts her upper body, her cheek soft against her arm. “I’m pretty sure.”

It goes silent again between them and he says nothing about the way the girl’s hand sways in the water, just the tips of her fingers, slinking back and forth in little slow circles.

He isn’t sure how long he watches her for, but it’s long enough that he can feel and hear the change in her breathing, the way her shoulders ease, the way her hand stops its slow circling, and her heartbeat is a lulling, steady thing in his ears.

It happens slowly, like the churn of his stomach and the slow crawl of acid along the back of his throat:

There’s a ring of bruises crawling around her wrists, growing darker like ink sinking through paper, or blood, seeping up through the fibres of a shirt—

And he knows exactly what shape they are.

A man’s long-fingered hand around a skinny wrist.

The girl slips out when the fire is nothing more than embers, blinks at him slowly in the half-dark, pushing to her feet, her gauzy dress and pale limbs lingering in front of him until she’s a phantom of girl slipping over cold wood floors and then out of sight like she was never there at all.

A storm rolls in later that day, the wind howls and screams until he isn’t sure which sounds are the women in other rooms or the storm trying to break in through the windows. He spends most of the night down in the main room drinking ale and watching the other guests who brave the storm just for the warm bodies inside.

The owner, _Chegund_ appears as the storm worsens, rallying the patrons with more liquor, a jaunty tune that he thinks sounds like something Jaskier would write, crude with suggestion, heavy with an innuendo that has the room laughing and jeering as some of the women get up to dance and tease more and more skin.

He’s distracted by the woman at his side, knowing he’ll bed her tonight, that there’s an unsettled itch in him that needs a scratch— lets her ply him with ale, lets him drape herself against him, lets her pull him into an arousal like the heat that rises as the night goes on.

When he sees the girl, it’s well after he’s already deep into ale and the main room has lulled again into laughter and skin and that heady, sweaty smell of sex and perfume, it takes him a moment to recognise her; her eyes are ringed in kohl, her hair curled but unbound, falling over a thin white dress that does little to hide what little body she has beneath.

His hand itches for the weight of his sword; feels the curl of his lip before he can kill the reaction on his face. Hiding it in his cup, chugging the rest of it down until he’s sure there’s nothing on his face.

Chegund, with his tree-bark face, keeps his hand on the girl’s hip, his rings glinting in the firelight, his smile like a crack in old wood, his teeth sharp and glinting like the rings on his hand.

He watches them until the woman at his side huffs, tells him it’s now or not at all and he thinks _fine,_ thinks _yes,_ thinks _it’s not any of my fucking business._ Thinks about bruises around skinny wrists.

But says: _not at all, then._

The woman huffs and leaves him.

He watches them, the girl and the owner, for the rest of the night, as they move between some larger parties; the girl stays at his side, under his hand—

She looks up at Geralt once, and he knows then, that she knew he was watching her… her chin rises like a dare, like a tight-mouthed, _you don’t know anything, Witcher._

And he doesn’t. _Shouldn’t_. She's none of his business. There's no coin, no gold, no deal made. She's just another girl. Another child, bones on a cave floor. But—

But he watches them all the same, until most of the men are being led upstairs and there are more moans than laughter in the brothel. Chegund’s arm settles around the girl’s shoulders as they sit at a table across the room. His hand playing absently with her hair as he's speaking to someone else... and the girl, Geralt realises, hasn't spoken once.

The girl slips out, a short time later, and Geralt listens to her steps, focuses on that little heartbeat as it fades as her steps do… until it’s behind a door and a lock and there’s nothing left of her at all.

He finishes his ale, finds the woman from earlier again. And in his rooms, with the hearth roaring and the wind screaming, he fucks her until there’s nothing in his head, until there’s nothing but her moans, drowning out the storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Qiqurn is a manipulation of two things: the Qiqirn and the Ijiraq, two mythological Inuit creatures, both really neat. You’ll probably see the Ijiraq’s like again.  
> Read more here if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ijiraq_(mythology) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qiqirn
> 
>   
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed this chapter, let me know what you think!
> 
> (And PS, Lalka is not her name. :) )


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

three

* * *

The woman stretches in his bed, her skin still marked from his mouth and hands from the night before. Slow-moving with an ease to her limbs of someone hoping for something more. To be pulled deeper into the still-warm sheets or for him to make some talk of how good it was, a promise to want her again.

But he has nothing for her.

She slips out of bed, her skin shining in the low, almost dead fire; the first tint of grey, dawn light sneaking in like the creak of cold air through the window.

The knock, this time, _is_ surprising, although he almost wants to nail the door shut when the girl enters, laden with a food tray and struggling to carry it through the door on her own.

 _Scrawny,_ he thinks, would make no good meal for anything, just a toothpick for sharp teeth.

Her eyes flick over the woman beside him, and Geralt folds an arm behind his head, watching her as she sets a tray on the table, careful not to disturb his swords and bags.

“I didn’t ask for that,” he says, his voice still rough from sleep. There’s an ache at the back of his head, too much ale, he thinks, but his stomach grumbles anyway.

The girl shrugs, stepping away from the table and trying hard, he thinks, to not look at the bed or the woman beside it as she pulls on her dress, still moving slowly enough that Geralt thinks about forcing her out the door with a cruel word or two. It feels… wrong to have them both in the room at the same time.

Which is a fucking strange thought, as he imagines she’s seen her fair share of mornings like this, hasn’t she?

 _Men are all too eager to show the world their cocks,_ she’d said.

He frowns and the girl frowns back, a softness to her mouth that’s a grumpy pout as she darts her eyes to the woman still dressing. “Val told me to bring it to you.”

“Tell her I didn’t order it.”

“ _You_ tell her,” she snaps, turning on her heel and heading to the fireplace, poking at the embers before throwing on more wood.

“You’ll have to forgive her, Witcher, Little Lalka’s a bit spoiled here,” the woman says, her hands on her hips and a little, unkind tilt to her lips. “Not used to speaking to guests, is she?”

The girl’s shoulders stiffen, but she doesn’t turn back around, poking at the wood until the flames start eating at it.

Geralt says nothing, looking at the woman, her dress still open at the front as she looks at the girl.

“What, no bath duties today? No one to play your tricks on to get out of doing your fair share?”

“Hey,” he grunts roughly, narrowing his eyes at the woman. The woman rolls her eyes, crossing the front of her dress and tying the sash around her middle with a huff.

“What is it with men and pretty little girls, hm? Do you want to fuck her, too?”

His lip curls, staring the woman down, and her mouth twists into a teasing, cruel-tinted smile. “I wouldn’t get too invested in that fantasy, Witcher, there’s not a cock on this continent getting into her, not while Chegund’s still breathing, anyway.”

Before he can say anything, the woman turns away and only glances back once. “Glad Val has you working at least, even if it’s not on your back like the rest of us.”

The door shuts, the girl turns, pulling in a breath and looking at him from across the room. She’s kohl-less today, back to a simple, soft-looking dress; he isn’t sure why he notices. Or cares.

“I’m supposed to tell you that there’s been a… request for your… for—” she stops, huffing and crossing her arms. “They asked for the Witcher.”

 _Hm_ , he grunts and won’t pretend it’s not a little funny, watching the way she bites her cheek, holding herself still the longer the silence stretches, the longer he stays in the bed, one arm folded behind his head, only the slowly-warming room between them.

“Well?” she says, her brows furrowing, looking at him like she isn’t sure he even heard her at all.

He snorts. “Did you want to watch me dress, girl?”

Her face twists even as she flushes. “ _No_.”

He lifts an eyebrow and the girl stutters into movement with a huff, her cheeks pink as she heads to the door. “I’ll tell Chegund you’re... that you’ll go.”

He huffs a laugh in the silence after the door shuts, the room empty but for the flames eating away at the wood in the fireplace. He stays in bed for another moment, his head full of thoughts he can’t quite organise; the girl, the brothel, the owner and— the way she’s dressed, her name, that still sits wrong in his mouth, the woman in his bed, _on your back like the rest of us._

_Little Lalka._

He pushes out a breath and tugs on his pants, moving to kneel in front of the fire before pulling in a breath and then another, sinking himself into meditation to clear his mind.

Winter settles in heavier. The road to Litvogur disappears beneath the snowfall, and the city, for as busy as it was when he arrived, freezes at its edges until only the very core of it still moves at all. Like a lake, freezing from the outside in.

But for all the city slows around him, the winter makes monsters and men more desperate, and he finds himself with a second job, within the day.

“I’ve never known a man to bathe so much,” the girl says, her chin propped on her forearms, arms crossed on the tub ledge, as he washes off another hunt.

“You get many covered in blood and guts?”

The girl’s nose scrunches. “No. Most are just… sweaty. Or stink of ale and horse.”

Geralt snorts. The _other_ smells of any brothel, beneath the perfume and the fire and lingering smell of sex. Exactly what the perfume and scented oils the women are all bathed in, is meant to hide. “I’ve been told I smell of horse.”

“You did that first night,” she tilts her head, her eyes flicking up like she’s thinking back on the moment. “But in a different way. Like a traveller. We get those pretty often, but they’re wealthier than you are. They smell different, too. Like spices and perfumes… Chegund likes to buy sil— What were you hunting this time?”

He notices the dropped sentence and looks at her, but when she doesn’t meet his eyes, he lets it go. “Just a Graveir.”

Her lips twitch, she turns, sliding sideways until she’s sitting facing away from him and stretching out her legs on the floor. “ _Just_ a Graveir he says.”

“You know them well, hm?” he snorts,

“I’ve heard stories,” she says, her head lolling back against the tub. “Men talk. You hear all sorts of tales here. Graveirs are big an’ mean and break bones as easy kindling, they say.”

He snorts. “Hunger makes them stupid, makes them easier to kill,” he grunts, scrubbing at his fingernails, trying to ger the blood and mud out from beneath.

“Because of the winter?”

 _Hm,_ he grunts. “Ground’s frozen. They mostly eat corpses.”

Her head lolls to the side, looking at him. He wonders why she’s so relaxed today, even for being stuck beside the tub again with nothing to do but sit and wait. “Lovely,” she says, her nose scrunching again.

He snorts, lips twitching.

“You’ve got blood in your hair, by the way.”

“Hm,” he says and brings his hands up, dragging them wetly through the tangled, dirty strands.

“Made it worse.”

He glances at her, a slow blink full of _aren’t you helpful?_

The girl smiles, a dimple showing in her cheek and she huffs a laugh, shifting up and onto her knees and reaching for his empty ale mug.

“Here,” she says and disappears behind him, nudging his shoulder with a finger. “Move forward.”

For a second he thinks _no,_ because it feels like a line he shouldn’t cross, feels like it’s one thing to have the girl sitting while he’s bathing, another to talk to her, even just a little, and another altogether to have her—

 _Nothing,_ he thinks, _let the girl wash your hair,_ _what does it matter, it’s her job, isn’t it?_

Or at least, some part of her job here, in this brothel.

He thinks of what she’d said before, _pretty sure that’s all they think I’m good for,_ and the way she averts her eyes around him in the tub, or colours the water until there’s nothing but a haze hiding his skin beneath the water.

Thinks about Chegund’s hand on her hip two nights ago, the way she’s so clearly dressed to be one of those girls in a brothel; meant to be looked at and wanted and made into a fantasy that’s all dependent on one’s coin. A pretty thing to bought, even if it’s only for a moment.

The girl pokes him. “Hey.”

Geralt grits his teeth, pushing out a too-heavy breath, leaning forward and letting the girl kneel behind him at the edge of the tub. He hears the empty ale mug dunk into the water with a glug, and then the girl’s fingers, small and warm on the side of his neck.

It makes him tense up for a second, a reaction he can’t kill, all for being touched in so weak a place. Right on the jugular, like the memory of the Striga’s— of _Adda’s_ mouth, her sharp girl-teeth burying into his throat.

But he tilts his head back and the water is warm and scented over his scalp and the girl’s hands are careful as she drags her fingers through it; water sluicing, draining away as she works the blood out.

When she reaches for her copper jug, he can feel that spark of magic, that little electric pulse in the air as she pours cleaner water along his scalp.

“Where does it come from?”

“Hm?” the girl hums, her fingers threading lightly into his hair.

“The water, it must come from somewhere, there’s no free magic in this world.”

“There’s a hot spring, not far into the mountains. Chegund used to take me when I was younger… I’m not making the water, I just… can bring it here because I know it’s there, I guess.”

 _Hm,_ he hums, and wants to ask what she is to him, who he is to her— but what would it matter? What good could come of knowing it? She’d be no better off out in the world outside of this brothel, Geralt knows. The world isn’t kind to pretty things.

The silence settles and it makes his thoughts too loud, too full of questions like the steaming and scented water in his bath, all hazy and heavy.

“Smell like a brothel girl,” he grunts, his nose full of the smell, carefully ignoring the way the girl’s heartbeat isn’t as steady as it was before.

Her fingers pause, her knuckles brush the nape of his neck, tangled in his hair. He feels her lean forward, the slight shift in air pressure, or gravity of a body too close to his. She sniffs. Once.

And then leans back.

“No. You still smell like you.”

He blinks, hearing the glug of the jug, feeling the water slide, the stroke of her fingers. He tells himself not to ask. Grits his teeth and listens to the fire, the slosh of water, the whump-bump of her heart and tells himself to not speak, to not ask—

“Like me?”

“Like… trees and leather and—and like—" she swallows, he can hear it, caught like something drowning beneath the uptick in her pulse. “Horse,” she lies.

Neither one laughs, the girl’s nails scrape his scalp lightly and Geralt closes his eyes.

* * *

Time passes strangely when days begin and end in the dark, filled with nothing but the wind and the white world the city has turned into. By the fifth day, he’s cursing Jaskier for having the right idea about wintering in a more southern city until the worst of the cold months have passed.

Not that he’ll ever tell the bard that.

But Roach is well-fed and warm, more than comfortable in the stables when he makes his way to her the next morning. And it’s a sad thought, as he heads towards the city centre, trudging through the still deepening snow, that though he finds more and more of Litvogur seeks him out as word spreads of the Witcher in their midst, he finds himself more looking forward to the ending of the days, rather than the start of them… which is something he isn’t sure what to do with.

He tells himself it’s for the uncommon luxury of a hot bath in a hot room, with good ale and better food… but he’s sure he can smell his own lie as easily as he smelt the girl’s the night before.

He wonders what she was going to say, trees and leather and— it doesn’t matter, not really, but her words linger like the scent in his hair and the softness of his skin beneath his leathers; and he feels out of sorts for it, his skin ill-fitting like the too-tight grip of a metal chest-plate.

But still, the marketplace is quiet, no horses or carts, only the long-distance travellers who know no other life but the road and the cities they find along the way. Like him, he knows, nothing but monsters and money.

Geralt steps into the Apothecary a solitary chime ringing above his head before a woman steps out, her hair greying, her skin lined with years. “Witcher,” she says, and there’s suspicion, like a cold draft in the air as she tilts her chin. “Let’s see it then.”

He drops the pack on her counter, letting her sort through it herself.

“ _Qiqurn_ ,” she mutter, looking over the bones and laying them out on the counter. “Rare indeed. You did well preserving them.”

Geralt watches her unravel the leather-wrapped pieces of the creature, laying them out as she goes.

“I can’t offer you what you’d get for this in Novigrad or Cintra, you know.”

“That’s fine,” he grunts, but he’s looking over the bones, counting—

His eyes narrow as she lays out the final bone… and he knows, easily, that there’s a piece of it missing. But he thinks back, to the blood-covered snow that night, to himself wrapping up the pieces, the still damp bones, the still-warm blood…

And then _she’s_ there, her eyes flicking to his pack, her voice curious. Too curious.

He has half a mind to go back to the brothel, to corner that skinny-limbed thief—

 _Stupid girl,_ he thinks, ready to find her and demand it back, even though it’s not about the coin or the theft at all… though it does look fucking ridiculous that that slip of a brothel girl managed to steal from a fucking _Witcher_.

“Anything else you want to sell or trade, Witcher?”

He bites back a sigh, knowing he has a job to do first, that he can deal with the little thief later.

The gust of snow follows him into the brothel, and it feels exactly like that first night, the cold burning in his fingertips, but he’s less tired this time and more— there’s a lingering hum of adrenaline in him that pools low and leaves him restless, on edge—

The wendigo had been weak but vicious and desperate and it was an unsatisfying hunt to kill something Geralt knew, had little time left anyway. Even if it was a monster, it felt like nothing more than an animal with one foot caught in a trap and gnawing at it out of desperation.

He wants a drink, a fuck to chase the last of his adrenaline away, and then a bath.

“Witcher!” a booming voice calls and Geralt grits his teeth, eyes moving to the source of the sound. He finds the girl first, held on Chegund’s lap, his arm around her middle— her eyes already meeting his across the brothel.

All thoughts of cornering her and calling her the little thief she is, disappear as quickly as the warmth of the brothel melts the snow still clinging to his boots.

He makes his way over, making sure his eyes don’t linger on anything too long even as he takes the scene in before him, keeping his face empty of anything. Even though he sees the wine jugs, the half-eaten chicken, the sloshing spill of wine on the tabletop, the way the men at the table are loose-limbed and the man himself, Chegund, eases on the bench, the wall at his back, the girl in his lap.

The way her heartbeat is just a little bit off-kilter.

 _Nervous_ , he thinks.

He glances at her and _doesn’t_ think about the difference in the sound of her pulse when she’s at his tub-side, even with him rough-edged and rude to her.

“I’ve heard you’ve been busy—” Chegund starts, but there’s kohl on the girl’s eyelids, a smoky grey, and a tint to her lips that makes them look just a little bit swollen. It makes her look… used in a way that makes his skin crawl, makes his hand twitch towards his sword; thinks about the look in her eyes, the little doe-eyed thing at his tub-side, filled with fucking _hope_ just to sit and stay and be _quiet_.

He looks away.

“— the least I could do for so skilled a Witcher. Isn’t it?”

He grunts, having no idea what the man said until there’s a jug of ale sliding across the table and the other man waits, his own cup lifted, _a toast,_ Geralt thinks, _to what?_

“To the Witcher of Litvogur,” he calls, and then men around him at the table raise their cups. “For however long he graces us his services… and he makes use of mine.”

 _The Witcher of fucking Litvogur,_ he thinks and has to grit his teeth to hold himself back. Instead, he smiles, and drinks.

There’s laughter again, jeering jokes about the _uses_ provided. Male voices, loose with alcohol, rough with smoke or lust as a few giggles come from the women already bought for the night and making homes on laps.

The girl doesn’t smile until Chegund’s arm tightens and draws her more firmly against his chest—and when she does, her smile is quick, forced, like a doll coming to life with a twist of a key.

She turns her head to look at the man holding her, letting him press his mouth to her jaw, his eyes flicking to Geralt across the table.

It takes an effort to make sure there’s nothing on his face.

“You look like you went a few rounds, Witcher,” Chegund says, his mouth crooked, his eyes a little glassy, his smell…

Geralt grits his teeth, watching the girl shift in the man’s lap, her eyes sinking down, looking at nothing.

 _Wouldn’t mind going a few fucking more,_ he thinks. “They don’t always die easy.”

The table laughs, but it’s tenser than before, the reminder that he comes dirty and tired and battle-marked not because he’s a man like them, but because he battles the monsters they can’t. That the marks on him are not just dirt from labour, but blood and guts and gore from the creatures they can only run in fear from.

 _A shitless death_ , he’d told men like them once, no matter the wealth in their pockets, it’s the best they could hope for.

Chegund nods. “I’d imagine not. Looks like this one gave you a good fucking fight.”

Geralt’s responding smile is sharp and too tight; that smell beneath his nose, worse than the creatures’ blood staining his leathers, is unmistakable now, low-rolling, tinged by anticipation and excitement… and it’s all, _all_ fucking focused on the girl in his lap. But there’s nothing from her, nothing but her heartbeat and her kohl-lined eyes. “It tried to.”

A hand lands on his shoulder, and there’s a curtain of perfumed hair, a red-lipped smile. “More ale, Witcher?” Val smiles at him, the jug already in her hand, hovering over his cup.

He lets her fill his cup, but she lingers at his side, her hand brushing along a gash in the upper shoulder of his leathers, over his collarbone, a too-close call near his jugular. “Looks like you could use a little care,” she says and trails her fingers over the thicker shoulder on his leathers, where he knows a new tear is. “And a hand with these.”

“I’ll manage,” he grunts and lifts his ale, hoping its dismissal enough, but the woman only smiles, slipping between the space between him and the next man, sliding herself into Geralt’s lap.

He pushes out a tense huff, ready to push her away—

“It’s the least we could do, isn’t it?” she says, her hand touching a mark on his jaw, and she must feel it tense and clench beneath her fingers but all she does is smile.

She’s playing a game, he thinks, something in her eyes as hard as the glint of his blade, as cold as it too, no matter the smile on her lips or the softness of her body. No matter the way she turns her head to look at Chegund across the table, with such a curiously thoughtful look, that he’s almost convinced himself.

“What do you think, Chegund, maybe little Lalka can help him.”

“I said—” Geralt starts, but the girl looks up and he can fucking see the _hope_ in them and it kills the words as quick as a slit throat.

“She’ll have him right fixed up in no time, all ready for… who did have last night, Witcher? Tia? I’m sure she’d be more than pleased to see you after our little Lalka has healed and cleaned you up.”

Across the table, Chegund’s arm around the girl’s waist is tighter than before, his mouth set in an irritated line, but the girl turns in his lap, putting her mouth to his ear, slow and smooth like the warm crawl of alcohol settling in Geralt’s own stomach.

 _Please,_ she whispers, nothing more than some small sound slipping through the forest, something he has to focus on, listen carefully to see what it brings. _Please, Chegund. You already called him the Witcher of Litvogur, I’ll be quick—_

Chegund’s eyes flick to Geralt and when he smiles, it comes out against the girl’s shoulder after he presses his mouth there.

“You’ll come to me when you're done,” he says, his voice low, his hand sliding the girl’s thigh. “And you’ll be good, yes?”

“Yes,” she says, but there’s no missing the skip, trip, plummet of her pulse. “I will.”

The moment stretches into something uncomfortable, something tinged in that slow shift in his own focus, as soon as he’s finished a battle; it’s all pulse-beat and his own breathing— where he wants nothing more than to give in to that lingering battle-hum of aggression and lunge across the table—to sink his sword into some beast and know that’s one less—

Val slips off his lap with a too-wide smile, her voice distant as she says something to the men and women at the table. Geralt watches the girl press her lips to the side of Chegund’s mouth, her heartbeat pounding as his hand slides higher, just out of sight beneath the table, but the flex of his arm shows the grip, groping sort of hold—

But then the girl slides of Chegund’s lap and out of that groping hold and Geralt is—

Following her.

(There are eyes on his back, and he doesn’t need to look back to know whose they are, but when they reach the stairs, he glances back and finds Val slipping into the spot the girl left, her smile as sweet as a poison-tipped apple.)

The wood stairs creak beneath his weight, and he feels huge at the girl’s back, following her up the stairs, feels monstrous, really, like a thing come out of the wild, all those creatures in the cold depths of the forest, more hunger than beast, just an empty stomach looking for something to fill it.

( _All she’s known is rage and hunger_ , he’d told Foltest. _Rage and hunger_.)

“You’re not as good a liar as you think you are,” he says and the girl’s shoulders tense, the drape of her dress makes a whispering sound over the floor between every hulking thud of his boots.

“Maybe,” she says, but doesn’t look back, not until they’re up the next flight of stairs and the brothel is dulled by two floors between them, only the faintest sounds of beds shifting, women moaning, men grunting…

Her hand is on the door to his room before she glances back at him, and he thinks to send her away, to tell her he really can fucking manage on his own but—

“Or maybe I’m just not lying at all.”

 _You are,_ he thinks, _I can hear it. And smell it._

(And he won’t admit, not even to himself, that he knows the difference because he heard it, smelt it, when she had been behind him, her hands in his hair, her pulse ticking up—)

She turns the knob, and his room is dark, lit only by moonlight, cold from him being out all day. The girl moves to the fireplace and it isn’t long before the hearth ignites; before the room gets thrown into a warming, red glow and the girl is lit by it, all skinny limbs where the fire pushes light through the thin of her dress.

He’s still standing in the middle of the room like he’s nothing more than a crude stone carving that’s supposed to be a man, but the girl turns and walks towards him, and he thinks of her across the brothel, her chin lifting, telling him how little he knows without a word at all. Thinks about Chegund’s arm, his mouth on her jaw, his hand on her thigh and sliding higher.

The way she turned her head, her lips soft on the angles of Chegund’s cheek. A girl playing a part, a child playing dress-up and filling a role that someone put her into. A fucking child—

He finds his hand lifting before he can stop himself, and he grips the girl’s chin, his hands rough and too large, dirty on the pale of her skin. Thinks he could bruise her without even trying. Thinks about the bruises on her wrists, hidden by whatever magic the girl has. He wonders what else she’s hiding.

“You are lying,” he says roughly, his grip tightening. “Take that shit off your face.”

She frowns, surprised by it, flinching for the too-rough edge to his voice. “I can’t. Chegund—”

“Makes a habit of dressing children up as whores?”

The girl jerks her chin back, her mouth tight, her eyes burning— the fire _cracks_ —

“You don’t know _anything—_ ” she shoves him, two small flat palms against his chest, but she’s nothing more than a twig hitting the thick of his body and he doesn’t even flinch for the impact. She shoves again, angrier, seething with it like a ruffled cat ready to claw at him.

“You know _nothing._ You think I want to wear this? You think I get to _choose_? You think I have any fucking say—” she makes a noise in her throat, uneven and torn loose. Shoving at him again before she stops, clenching her hands into fists until her knuckles bleed white. “Do you know what Lalka means, Witcher?”

The name sticks, the first time she’s called him it directly. The first time she’s used that name like everyone else does; like it defines him more than his own name ever can

He supposes it’s true enough. What would Geralt be if not for _Witcher_?

He says nothing, holding the girl’s gaze.

“It means _doll_ ,” she spits, and he watches her hand close around a handful of her dress along her side until her knuckles go white. “Little Lalka. _Little doll_. There are no children in this brothel, that boy works in the kitchen, he’s the old matron’s boy. Chegund kept him on. He doesn’t sell _kids_.”

“Just you then?”

She laughs, sharp and uneven. “Me? Weren’t you listening to the woman the other day? I’m _Chegund’s_ —"

He steps forward, gripping her arm, too hard, he thinks, too hard. “You’re a _child._ ”

“I’m a _toy,_ ” she spits, yanking her arm back and stumbling back a step, looking up at him, doe-eyed, wet-eyed. Too young. “He buys me pretty things and then dresses me in them. I’m spoiled and kept like a _pet_. I sit where he tells me to sit and eat what he tells me to eat and I do it all because he’s all I _have_. I have _nothing._ _Nothing_. No name, no money, no family— I don’t even know what I am.”

“What—” he starts, but there’s a knock on the door and the girl pulls away from him and moves towards it, her mouth tight, her body tight. Her pulse thumping.

There’s a boy, younger than her by some years, on the other side; he has the girl’s copper jug and a small bundle of fabric in his hands.

“Val told me to bring it,” he says with a frown, his eyes darting to Geralt as his voice drops to a child’s whisper that isn’t all that quiet at all… and no idea Geralt can hear it all anyway. “ _Are you okay?_ _Does Chegund know—_ ”

“Yes,” the girl says quickly, forcing a smile and already pushing the boy back out. “It’s fine, Ed, I’m just patching him up. Chegund told me to.”

The boy nods, glancing back again around the girl pushing him out the doorway, “Is that really the Witcher, with gold eyes an’ all?”

 _Edan,_ she hisses and then, as the door’s shutting, her voice sinking lower: _I’ll tell you later. I promise. Go._

She pushes out a breath, her hand on the door before she turns to face him and carries the jug back to the table and sets it down with a _thunk._

The silence stretches between them like a ligament, stretching and pulling like meat off a bone.

The girl moves first, and it almost makes him angry, how… _fucking stuck_ he feels, stuck silent, stuck still, stuck on that blade-tip point between anger and aggression and his own ability to walk away.

He watches her reach for the bundle of fabric and unwrap it; inside are scraps of fabric, _for him_ , he knows, because she came to patch the Witcher back up, pressed her lips to a man’s cheek and promised him—

He grits his teeth.

The girl takes one bit of fabric and dips it into the jug, squeezing it out in her fist… and it steams between her fingers as she lifts it to her face.

And Geralt steps back; unlacing the side of his leathers, watching the girl from the corner of his eye as she drags the strip of cloth over her eyes to rub the kohl from her eyelids.

He finishes first, stripping down to his pants, watching as she drags the cloth over her mouth, smearing the tint to it until it’s just _girl_ left behind.

Until she’s just the girl at his bath-side, not… whatever fucking _thing_ the man downstairs wants her to be.

“Better?” she asks, and even though he can hear the tinge of anger in her voice, it’s undone by the way she looks at him, how dark her eyes are, young and wide and tinged gold by the flames from the fire.

 _Not nearly,_ he thinks, and wonders what he would have thought of her, had she been any older than she is now. If she would be another warm body to sink himself in, another body to lose himself in, another woman he’d not even learn the name of before he left again.

He grunts.

Her shoulders sag, just a little, like whatever it was she wanted him to say, he didn’t. But he has no idea what there even is to say, other than _no, not at all. No, you shouldn’t be here. No, don’t look at me like that._

_There is nothing in me meant for you._

“The bed might be eas—” she starts and Geralt grunts out an irritated _no._

He doesn’t want to think about her anywhere near a _fucking bed._ Not while he’s still thinking about the man below them, the promise she made, the slip of her lips on his cheek— not the bruises on her wrists or her fucking name making her a possession of a groping, greedy-handed man.

 _They created me_ just as _they created_ you, Renfri had said, just before burying her dagger in him.

He sinks into the chair, pushing back enough that there’s enough room for the girl to slip between him and the table, telling himself to let her do what she came to do. Her job. Because it is.

And there’s nothing he can do about that. Isn’t she better off here than out there and dead? Out there and what— fitting her into a life that’s all about monsters and money? From one hunt to the next, one creature to the next—

That’s no life at all.

He watches her step around his leg and slip between him and the table, watches her lean against it, her eyes downcast, eyelids a little red from her rubbing the cloth against them.

The copper jug is loud when she drags it across the table, but after that, there’s nothing but the fire and their breathing; her hands on his shoulder, the wringing drip of water whenever she cleans the cloth of blood, bringing it back hot and wet to drag over his skin until his shoulder and the cut above his collarbone is the cleanest spot on him.

Through it all, her words loop in his head, her anger and that bitter, salty taste of a sadness more like a resignation of her own reality.

 _They created me_ just as _they created_ you.

_You think I get to choose?_

He doesn’t think much about what he’s doing, even though he thinks half his mind is telling him to leave, to cut his losses, to not _care—_

In the quiet, his hand touches her thigh, just above her knee, and he doesn’t need to look to know how dirty it looks, blood beneath his nails, his hand too large on her, too rough for the dress, let alone the skin beneath, but his thumb strokes once, anyway, and he hopes she takes it as the apology he means it to be.

He isn’t even sure what he’s sorry for. For his anger, for her, or for the reality of what the world is, in all its small cruelties.

Her hand pauses on his chest, and she doesn’t look up at him, not for another beat of her heart and another thump of his. But when she does, he finds his voice as rough as his hands, as low as a beast’s growl in the dark.

“You’re not a toy.”

He watches her blink, all wide-eyed, doe-eyed girl as she looks at him, searching for— he doesn’t know. Sees the question, or tastes it as well as if the words were his own, _then what am I?_

He has no answer for her, only knows how he sees her, what she is to him: a quiet moment, a lulling heartbeat, a strangely brave sort of girl who lifts her chin at him across the width of a brothel.

Her eyes sink, lashes heavy and dark, and he feels her fingers brush along the cut, smells that electric-tipped scent to the air that magic has, and feels it in his skin like the hum in the air after a storm.

“Izrie,” she says, so low he barely hears her at all, just her fingertips on his skin. “My name’s Izrie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a note: the striga that Geralt fought in episode 3, Foltest's daughter, is also called Adda, after her mother.


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

four

* * *

_Izrie._

_My name’s Izrie._

Her thigh, skinny beneath his hand, tenses as she shifts on her feet, her knee touching the inside of his; the space between them narrowing down to the air between them, growing warmer by the fire, by that spark-static of magic beneath her fingers.

He feels the trail of them, a soft slide of soft-tipped fingers along a scar, older, already a long-healed white line just along the meat of his shoulder.

Her heart trips in her chest, ticking up a little faster; he thinks about pushing her away, putting more distance between them. (But it’s a different sort of sound than the one he heard when she’d been behind him in the bath. He isn’t sure what it is, exactly, tinged by nerves and something else.)

Instead, he watches the line disappear. Ignores the low hum of his medallion hanging low on his chest and watches the perfectly clean, shiny-tips of her nails sink along his arm, over another scar, watches it fade like was nothing more than a line in the sand, washed away by the incoming tide.

He isn’t sure he remembers a time when his skin wasn’t a map of his history, wasn’t a winding road of all the paths and choices he’s taken… and it’s strange now, to see it so plain. So unmarked and bare.

It makes him think of the bruises he saw, the ring of them, four-fingered, one-thumbed, a claim sunk into skinny little wrists. He’s no fool, there are all sorts of marks that can be left on whores— on women and men in the throes of passion, whether paid or honest, whether heated or slow— he’s left more than his fair share, his own four-fingered, one-thumbed brands on hips or thighs or whatever skin was beneath his. But there is a difference in the ownership, in the gentle touch after, the sore-limbed, rubbed-raw, over-sensitive ache of a body that’s been well-fucked— and something else when those bruises, those sex-scars are covered up like they’re things to be ashamed of.

And something else altogether when a girl of fifteen uses magic to hide the truths left in purple-blue marks along her skin.

“You hunt all sorts of things, don’t you? Fought all sorts?” the girl— _Izrie, my name is_ Izrie— says. 

He makes a noise in his throat, a yes that’s more grunt than anything. Watching the tips of her fingers, the clean crescent of her nails, that pulse-warmth of magic like a hand on his skin. A slow touch filled with… something.

“Do you know how you got them? Each one?”

For a second, he’s almost annoyed by the question, by her asking it, has heard that question so many times by those who’ve seen his skin; trailed fingertips, not unlike hers, oiled, or sweaty, pulses still thrumming from sex. Lovers, long or momentary, all giving in to the curiosity for the Witcher in their bed. 

_That one looks right nasty, what gave you that, then?_

_What tried to rob you of your treasure?_

But it sounds different, there’s no curiosity in her voice, a question with more behind it; it’s not about the scar itself, he thinks. 

“Yes.”

“And what gave it to you?”

He frowns, her fingers slow on a scar that curves along his shoulder, a claw mark, a griffon. Him like a fish on a hook.

He watches the mark fade like it was never there at all. It itches at him. Sits wrong.

“If it was a claw or a sword, metal or bone? You remember all of them?”

When her fingers slide over another scar, on the thick of his bicep, Geralt stops her. Catches her wrist between the still-dirty, too-rough grip of his own hand and holds her still.

There’s something to be said of owning one’s skin, and Geralt has long come to terms that his body is a beast he works inside, that things done to it, to _him_ , have shaped him into this _other_ sort of monster, not quite man, not quite thing, not quite _anything_.

But still, it’s his and each scar is his, hard-earned by tooth and claw and sword-point.

She goes still in his grip, and he hears her lick her lips, the dart of her tongue, the sound of her swallowing; her fingers twitch. 

He wants to ask her to drop the illusions, to stop playing with whatever magic she has and let him see the truth of her, like those bestiaries they were given in Kaer Morhen. Peeled apart monsters, broken down beasts, section by section until Geralt knew them well enough to name them and find them, deaf and blind in the dark.

Everything is so much easier to understand on a page. 

“Yes,” he says, her pulse beating beneath his fingers. “Why?”

Her hand twitches in his grip and his scars return, like the slow path of a trickle of water on his skin. 

The girl pulls her hand from his and he wasn’t even entirely sure he knew he was still holding onto it. But she does anyway, and steps away from him, her dress a whisper against the wood floor, her eyes downcast, collecting the dirtied, bloodied strips of cloth into a pile, only the faintest tremble in the lengths of her fingers, the slightest giveaway made all the more obvious by how she isn’t looking at him.

Until she does.

Her hand on the copper jug, her hair a bloodied-gold in the firelight. Looks a moment away from leaving, a moment away from burying whatever question or curiosity is itching in her throat.

And then she tucks her hair behind her ear.

“Can you tell what did this?”

It isn’t obvious at first, why it matters. What she asks. Why she stands there, her eyes sinking down, her hand tightening on her copper jug—

But her heart trips in her chest like an echo in a cavern, bouncing into him. She doesn’t look back up, pulling her bottom lip into her mouth and waiting.

And it takes him a moment to see it, to see the nearly flat edge along the top curve of her ear, to think about why she seems… anxious. 

He pushes to his feet, ignoring the way her back stiffens, the way her jaw tightens, the way her pulse flies like the beat of a hummingbird’s wing as he steps closer. 

His hand rises, and he hesitates, just for a moment, and curses himself for it, for being hesitant and cowardly for such a simple— such a _meaningless_ touch. But he grinds his teeth and lifts his hand the rest of the way to touch the curve of her ear, and the very tips of his fingers brush in the soft of her hair, tucking it a little more behind the shell of her ear.

If it weren’t for the slightly too-flat top, he doesn’t think he would’ve ever noticed, but now, standing next to her, towering over her, he can see it: a faint, jagged-white line that curves along the shell, right from the starting curve to the back. It’s uneven and up close he can the way someone started in on it, curved up, creating the rounded curve of a normal ear out of something that must have been—

 _I don’t even know what I am,_ she said.

He skims the tip of his finger over it, feels the too-flat, uneven ridge— and the girl jolts, her hand lifting even as she stumbles away, untucking her hair to hide her ear again. She stops, crossing her arms and holding herself tight, a step away from him; he can see the rise and fall of her chest, hear her heartbeat and her nerves like a thrum in his eardrum.

He watches her, and his thoughts fly like a swarm of birds: the way her hair is always carefully braided or parted and coiled and curled on either side of her face, the way she stands now, the hesitation to ask, those nerves from before.

_I don’t even know what I am—_

“You don’t know who did that to you,” he says and it’s not even a question, not really. He knows the curve of claws and blades and metal and bone and that, he thinks, _that_ was done _to_ her. 

Intentionally. 

She shakes her head and then she’s grabbing her jug, the gathered-up cloths and his hand is out before he can stop himself— and then jerking it right back off of her when she goes stiff beneath his grip, his hand inches off her arm as if she burnt him; floating there, dirty and too large like he is, still towering over her.

“I’ll pour you a bath before I go,” she says, her eyes sunk down, lashes dark against the flush of her cheeks, her heartbeat loud enough it’s nearly distracting. 

“Fuck the _bath,_ ” he says, rougher than he means to, but she’s stepping away again and his hand is back on her arm, her eyes darting up to his. “Izrie—”

He watches the way she _winces_ at the sound of her name falling between them, pulling back on his grip on her arm, but he holds tighter, all those questions in his head, those images he’s been trying so hard not to think about, the bruises, the fatigue, her name, the man who keeps her—

“I shouldn’t— you can’t call me that, Chegund—”

“Fuck Chegund—” he growls. “Did he do that to you?”

“I told you I don’t _know,_ ” she bites out, yanking back again, but he holds her tighter, a part of his mind thinking about bruises, a voice in the back of his head taunting him in a cruel voice, _you’re no better, are you?_

It’s enough to make him let her go.

She stumbles a little before catching herself. “I don’t know, I don’t— I shouldn't have shown you— asked y— Just. Forget it.”

His face twists, irritated, full of _not fucking likely,_ stepping up to her again, her head tilting up to look at him. “Someone carved your fucking _ears, girl._ ”

Her heart trips, and he thinks he hates the sound of it, how easily he can hear it, that two-timed whump-bump of her… whatever it is she’s feeling.

It’s too fucking _honest_.

Her mouth opens and then shuts and he watches her mood shift like the flicker of firelight twists her features. Narrowed eyes and a tight mouth. “I shouldn’t have asked. I don’t know what happened. Or who did it. It’s not your business. You’re— you’re a client and I did my job.”

She steps around him and for a moment, a moment he thinks _fine,_ thinks, _good,_ thinks: _you aren’t my fucking problem—_

But he reaches for her arm again and when her eyes flick up to his, he thinks about the hope in her eyes, Chegund’s hand inching up her thigh—

They both think of her bruises, he’s sure; they both saw them, saw the other _seeing them_ at his bath-side in the firelight.

“That bone will not do what you want it to do.”

Her breath stutters, her eyes dark and wide and searching his like she’s waiting for something more. Violence, anger, for him to take it back.

He waits for her to deny it, to try to lie and say she didn’t. Like most would do when faced with a Witcher baring down over them. 

But she doesn’t.

She blinks, swallows. “You don’t know what I want it to do.”

He frowns, because _yes_ , he thinks, _what else could you want?_ What everyone else wants with something like that. To forget, to find bliss in an empty-headed daze. To be free of thought and worry and reality. Even for a moment.

But is that what she wants? His eyes narrow, but the girl keeps her eyes on his. He wishes, for a second, that it was more than just her heartbeat he could hear. Thinks about her bruises, if there are more, if she has those four-fingered, one-thumbed marks on her body like so many others do in this place. 

What else could a fifteen-year-old want to forget but being bruised by— what she’d say?— the only thing she has? 

Unless it’s not for her at all. 

_Idiot,_ he thinks, _and you call yourself a Witcher._

It’s a well-known fact that there are monsters out there that prefer children most of all. Brittle bones and too-young limbs, the softness of youth all wrapped in bite-sized pieces. 

And he knows how easily, how often those monsters can be so convincingly _man-shaped._

Her heart trips again, and there are questions on his tongue but he’s never been graceful anywhere but in the muck and blood of battle, nowhere so smooth as with a sword in his hand.

“Do you even know to use it? How much to use?” 

She looks up at him, her heart thudding so loudly he wonders if it’ll break her ribcage.

“I need to go,” she says instead of answering, and when she pulls away this time, he lets her. Lets her slip free like the girl she was the first night, a phantom in the firelight, slipping away into the dark.

His thoughts tumble, and he watches her gather the fabric but leave the jug— thinks about where she’s going— _who_ she’s going to—

“Wait.”

She stops, almost at the door, turning back to face him. The silence grows in between his heartbeat and hers and the crack of the fireplace—

“ _Fuck._ ” He pushes the curse out through his teeth, moving towards his bags and kneeling down. When he finds it, he stands again, moving towards her and holding out the little bottle.

She hesitates, eyes darting from his eyes to his hand; her hand slow to take it, holding the little, corked-bottle between them. 

“A sleeping potion,” he shifts on his feet, his voice rough and low. “It’s strong. Use only very little. It was made for me, not for men.”

One of Yen’s most appreciated skills, he thinks, the ability to help him fucking _sleep._

Her hand tightens around it and her heart trips, _fucking skips_ and when she looks up at him this time, he nearly feels sick for the _fucking hope_ in them.

 _Don’t say anything,_ he thinks, _just go._

She nods, the bottle tucked inside her hand, and when the door shuts behind her, he blows out a long breath and listens to the sound of her steps, her heartbeat, fading down the hallway.

He tells himself not to—

And it’s almost fucking laughable, how often he does that lately. _Fucking Litvogur,_ he thinks, _fucking winter_ is unravelling him from the inside out.

He tells himself not to go, but he’s already in the hall, his ears strained, half his mind on the brothel unwinding for the evening floors below him, with the scents, sounds of men and women giving and getting exactly what they got paid for in the other rooms around him.

He tells himself not to, to go get a drink, or to meditate or sleep or _fuck_ , even— until his head is empty and he can remind himself why it’s not his business, not his problem, not his _anything_.

But he’s still walking, his feet quiet on the old wood, his heartbeat low and slow and steady, listening for a familiar sound, a voice or a heartbeat, or her smell, maybe, that clean scent of a perfumed and oiled, soft-skinned girl.

He finds it soon enough, that familiar little heartbeat— and a voice dulled by a thick-wood door.

_What happened to your face?_

_Nothing. The steam made it run. I took it off._

_…I see. And how is our Witcher friend?_

_He’s… thank you for letting me help. I like practising my… you know._

A grunt. _Seemed the proper thing to do, hm? You’re right, wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of a Witcher. Especially not the Butcher of Blaviken, eh?_

A rough laugh. The girl’s pulse ticks up just a little. _He’s been… nice._

_Nice? He hasn’t tried anything, has he?_

_What, no. Don’t be— I wouldn’t._

_I know you wouldn’t, darling. but men like him… you should be careful with them. I’ve told you._

_He hasn’t… I don’t think—_

Chegund laughs, low, into a cup that sounds nearly empty. Geralt hopes the girl managed to get the potion into it before the man downed its contents.

_Of course he would, Lalka, don’t be stupid. Come here._

_Let me get you another drink, first._

_I’m fine. I bought you something today, I was going to wait for your birthday, but now’s a good a time as any, isn’t it?_

_You didn’t have to._

_Come. Try it on for me._

_Chegund—_

_Didn’t you tell me you’d be good? Hm? That was the deal, wasn’t it? Come here, Izrie._

He hears the footsteps, the shift of fabric, the uptick in her pulse that’s an uneven, unsteady song of nerves, while the other… beats faster for a different reason.

Geralt grits his teeth, leaning against the wall next to the door even as he tells himself to leave, to go to the brothel floor, to find a willing body to lose himself—

There’s too much noise from the brothel below, too much low rolling noises to pick up more than just the edges of things: her heartbeat, Chegund’s breathing, fabric shifting… 

It’s fucking loud in his head, twists into images, imagination spilling sounds into twisted ideas: the girl, the slide of her dress off her shoulders, greedy hands and eyes and more bruises and— 

_You look lovely. Do you like it?_

_It’s pretty. Thank you._

There’s a soft sound, an exhale, a stutter in her breathing— the shift of weight on a soft mattress— a exhale more like a sigh—

It goes quiet again, no matter how hard he listens, until a soft catch of her breath and _come lie with me, sweet girl._

His hand itches for his sword, his lip curling, a swell of violence in him that makes him jerk towards the door before he catches himself and he forces himself still, straining to hear something: a wet noise, lips against skin— the girl’s pulse ticks higher and higher and he can fucking _see it_ in his head— and his hand is already up, ready to form a Sign. If she didn’t manage to get the potion in his drink then—

But there’s a groan, a shifting sound of a body letting all its weight ease, a slowing heartbeat next to the racing of the girl’s, and the low sound of a heavy exhale muffled into something…

And then quiet. 

The girl breathes out, unsteady and long, and it’s the only sound next to the low, steady breaths of a man slipping deeper and deeper into sleep.

 _Good job, girl_ , he thinks, and then catches himself standing outside of the door and lingering. For what? _For nothing,_ he thinks and heads down the hallway and down the stairs towards the brothel.

A drink is exactly what he fucking needs.

  
  
  


It’s the shift of his bed that wakes him first.

And then the press of a knee against his side, the brush of fabric over his skin—

But he’s hazy from sleep and drink, and it’s _fucking stupid_ , he knows, to have gotten so lax in any one place— but it takes him another moment to understand the weight, to bring his mind up from the depths of sleep and blink into the dark. To focus on the pale body on top of his, the blurred white shape of a woman—

A girl. A fucking _girl—_

And before he’s even fully awake, his hands are already up and bracing against her hips as she straddles his lap, her dress, silky and smooth and slippery beneath his hands.

He grunts, gripping tighter as she leans forward, her weight shifting in a way that distracts him—just for a fucking _second_ —her hands on his chest, blunt nails digging in just as her lips brush—

He rolls them, quickly, Izrie’s breath pushes from her chest in a rush as her back hits the bed, as he bears down over her, grabbing her hands and pinning her to the mattress.

He looks down at her, feels hulking and terrible over her, through the fall of his hair around his face, her eyes wide and dark, looking up at him in the moonlight. Her chest shifts and it’s hard not to notice the quiver in it, the peak of her nipples through the thin silk. 

But all it does is make him more fucking angry. 

_“The fuck are you doing?”_ he snarls, his grip tight enough to bruise, he knows, but he’s angrier than he expected, feels it burning inside of him at the sight of her beneath him and dressed the way she is.

 _I bought something for you,_ Chegund had said, and Geralt hadn’t seen it, but he’d imagined more than this, just silk and skin, a girl barely covered. Slipping from one man’s bed to another.

“Did I give you any fucking idea that this is what I wanted from you?” he snarls, and her chest jerks, breath puffing out of her. “ _Did I?”_

Her mouth tightens as her eyes narrow, her jaw setting as she glares up at him, ruffled and angry and something _else,_ too. “You took Tia last night. Why not me?”

His face twists. “I paid for a _woman_ in my bed, not a _child_.”

“I’m not a _child_ ,” she spits, straining against his grip.

“You’re not a fucking adult either,” he growls back at the same time she twists in his grip, choking out _you’re hurting me._

“ _Good_ ,” he snarls. “Then you’ll know how fucking stupid this was. You know what I am? Who I am? What someone like me could do—”

“I don’t want him!” she cries, her face crumpling. “ _I don’t want him._ ”

It kills the worst of the anger in him like a snuffed flame, like a cut throat, bleeding it out of him. He’s stuck watching her chest jerk, her face twist as the first cry breaks out of her throat.

“I’ve tried,” she sobs, the sound of it like a fish hook against his ribs. “I did. _I swear I did—_ ”

He hesitates over her, watching her crumple up, stuck beneath him—there’s a memory somewhere of being held, of comfort, but it’s been decades since he’s known any touch that wasn’t born of violence or bred from fucking. Doesn’t know how to touch her in any way that isn’t meant for an enemy or a lover… and she’s neither one of those.

“I _hate him,”_ she chokes and Geralt feels it snag in his chest, the sound and sight of her, and he thinks about Yen, about the moments between one round and the next or the after of the last one, before his armour or hers came back on, layer by layer or kohl-lined eye by red-tinted lip.

He stretches out beside her on the bed, watching her profile, the way she presses her hands over her face… before reaching out, slowly, cautiously. He has no idea how to comfort crying girls, but he curves an arm over her waist and tugs her into him—

And she comes, easily, willingly, her chest jerking with another sob, her wet face pressing into his neck and her hair, sweet-smelling beneath his nose.

She’s nothing _,_ nothing at all to hold, just a jerking, trembling little body and a breaking voice, an aching sadness that weighs down the air, turns it bitter and dark, endless and empty.

He isn’t sure how long she cries for, how long he holds her, long enough her crying turns into uneven breaths, and her uneven breaths turn into hitches and her hitches turn into—

The very first tint of a grey-edged dawn and a body, pressed so tightly into his, he isn’t entirely sure where he ends and it begins. They’re stuck together, twisted in the blankets, her head still tucked in his neck, one leg over his waist—

And it’s _nice_ in the way waking with another body often is, but it’s too hot and it takes him a few sticky-limbed seconds to piece together just whose body he’s so tightly pressed up against. Pushes out a breath and tries to untangle them, irritated that he fell asleep, irritated that she’s curled herself so tightly onto him, irritated that he’s stuck against her. 

Irritated that he feels more rested than he has in weeks.

Izrie makes a noise in her throat, burrowing tighter into his neck, even as he gets their legs separated enough he can edge his lower body away from hers. 

He sighs and edges further back; it’s no place for her to be, not at his side, not in his bed, not with him at fucking all.

Slipping free of the bed, he eases Izrie onto the bed, ignoring the way she burrows smaller, coils up into the warm spot he left behind. Stands at the side of it and looks down at her, soft-mouthed in sleep, her hair spilling out behind her, tangled in the sheets, her shoulder bare and pale in the growing, pale blue-dawn light—

And looks away, pulls in a long breath and lets it out slowly; makes himself move towards the dead fire and tosses in a few more logs. He forms Igni in the quiet chill and waits for it to start eating away at the new wood and spread the first edges of warmth into the too-cold room.

He needs to wake her, he thinks, face the moment ahead, figure out what the fuck she was thinking crawling into his bed like that. 

_You fucked Tia, why not me?_

_Fuck,_ he pushes out into the quiet and looks back over at the bed, at the slow shift of the girl’s shoulder, nearly buried in the blankets, barely a lump at all.

He moves to the window, dropping into the stiff wood chair at the table, wondering if Roach can make the long road south yet, but the snow is still falling, lazily drifting down and settling thick and heavy on the ground. 

He’s getting fucking tired of snow. Tired of fucking Litvogur and whatever the fuck it’s doing to his head. He wants to blame the winter, blame the confines of being stuck too long in one place, but his eyes drift back to the girl in the bed—

And finds her eyes, heavy-lidded and slow-blinking, already looking at him. 

He stalls, trying to think of something to say that isn’t just a growl of _what the fuck were you thinking, girl?_

“How long do you think that potion will last?” she mumbles, still slow with sleep.

“How much did you give him?”

“A drop, you said it was strong. I was afraid it didn’t work, but…”

 _Let me get you another drink,_ she’d said, to slip the grip of the man trying to fucking undress her.

“What would you have done?” she asks, still curled up beneath the blankets. “If it hadn’t?”

 _Fuck,_ he thinks, gritting his teeth and blowing out a heavy breath. He doesn’t want to ask how she knew he was there, feels like too much of an admittance on its own. Fucking _smell_ , probably. Like sweat and blood and dead Wendigo.

“I was just passing.”

She looks at him and blinks. “You weren’t.”

“Is that why you came?” he asks instead of answering, no good answer for her. Nothing that won’t come out cruel, hard-edged, just as tangled and knotted as he feels when he tries to figure out why he can’t bring himself to be _cruel_ and _hard-edged_ and make her understand that there’s nothing he can do for her.

Better here than out there. Better under the hands of a greedy man than under the teeth of a continent that eats itself daily, cannibalizes its own people as one lord or king rises up in the wake of another.

Or worse, he thinks, a brothel like this is far above some he’s visited. She’s almost lucky.

Fucking _lucky,_ he thinks and ignores the sickly-bitter twist of his stomach. 

_Come lie with me, sweet girl._

“No,” she says.

“What would you’ve done,” he says, low enough he almost hopes she can’t hear him at all. “If it hadn’t worked.”

She blinks, and he watches her stretch out on the bed, catches sight of her ear in between the turn of her body and the way her hair tangles beneath her head and the mattress.

“Waited for him to finish,” she says to the ceiling, blinking up at nothing; he watches her eyelashes, long and dark, the slight upturn to her nose, the curve of her lips and chin towards a skinny neck.

He can almost hear the crack in his own teeth, the white-knuckled fist of his hands, it’s hard to keep himself still, hard to hold himself _back—_ knowing that this happens, that she isn’t the only girl or boy to be at the mercy of someone who was meant to protect them. She isn’t the _only_ , she’s just _another._

But faced with it, faced with her—

He hears the turn of her head before he focuses on her again, his thoughts running behind his eyelids, spilling sick truths of what that man can do, what any man can do, what _finish_ means.

“How often?” it’s barely a sentence, barely more than a grunt, but she must understand anyway, her shoulder shifting beneath the blankets.

“More often now,” she says quietly. “I thought…” she starts, but blows out a breath and pushes up, looking across the room and into the fire crackling away in the hearth. She stretches out her toes beneath the blankets, then eases them. It’s a weirdly child-like thing to do and it makes him angrier, looking at her in the daylight, still dressed the way she is, compared to only seeing her in the blur of the moonlight, where nothing seems quite real. Or at least, easier to ignore.

She bites her lip. Worrying it before looking at him. “Is it me? Because I can… I didn’t think you liked the makeup, but I could— dress up a bit more?”

He winces. “Don’t—”

“But I could make myself look a little older?” she rolls on, shifting to her knees and turning to face him, quick and nervous and too young sounding, eager in a way that curdles in his stomach. Hopeful in a way that kills him, just a little. Like a knifepoint, easing its way under his skin. “Tia had dark hair. I can change it a bit, with my… you know. If that’s what—”

He pushes out a breath, his bones creaking in his hand. “ _Stop talking_.”

Her mouth snaps shut. Then opens. “But—”

“ _No_.”

She looks away, back down to the bed, her fingers twisting a bit of the blanket in her fingers. It goes quiet, too quiet, stretches out like tar until he’s sure he’s being fucking suffocated by it—

And then she nods as if to herself. “I should go, shouldn’t I? In case he wakes up?”

She looks at him then, with that doe-eyed, hopeful look that makes him somehow angry and helpless all at once, like she’s waiting for him to change his mind… or at the very least that he wants her to stay, to tell her it’s fine, that Chegund would probably be out for hours. But he _can’t_.

He can’t.

“Probably.”

Her shoulders sag, just a little and she nods, slipping out of the twisted blankets until she slips off the bed and stands on the other side of it. Across the room, Geralt feels strangely miles away, even though there’s nothing but a dozen steps and one bed between them.

And somehow, he thinks, he feels like a fucking ocean wouldn’t be enough space.

He wants to tell her to go and not come back. To go and use that sleep potion for as long as it will last. To go and be satisfied with what she has because there’s little out there in the world that would be any better.

But it won’t come out of him; his tongue is a dead thing in his mouth. His teeth clenched because he isn’t sure if it’s true at all.

Is it better to be swallowed once, or to be made a slow meal of?

She’s gone before he can pull himself out of his own thoughts and make his mouth move, before he can bring his tongue back to life and give it any purpose.

And by then, it’s just empty air and the smell of her, fading beneath the fire slowly warming the room.

* * *

It’s still snowing, thick and heavy flakes that wind down in slow-rocking waves, but the sun is high, even between the clouds and the air is crisp and cold and fresh-tasting after the scents of the brothel and the girl stuck in his nose like dried blood.

There’s a message tucked in his pocket, hastily scribbled and nearly illegible, a request for the Witcher to come to the far edges of the city where, near the mountainside, something has been _tearing apart good, regular folk—_

_And we’ve scraped together all we got, but it’s yours, Witcher, if you can help us._

He’s just stepping out into the knee-deep snow outside the stables when he hears it, a scream that catches somewhere inside his chest and tears at his ribs— and his head jerks towards the noise—

And then there’s a laugh, that chases it, and a girl, thigh deep in the snow, wiping snow off her cheek, twisting away from a dark-haired boy scrabbling to get more snow into a ball.

He watches Izrie’s fingers twitch, stretched out towards the snow, watches it rise and ball itself up and the boy, _Edan,_ he thinks, is already moving to run, stumbling in the snow, flushed-red and voice breaking in a laugh—

_No cheating! Iz, that’s cheating!_

But the snowball is already flying and the boy falls face-first into the snow in a puff of white that makes Izrie laugh louder, makes his own lips twitch as he watches them. 

_You cheated first! I saw those balls you had stashed!_

She pelts him with another, just as his head appears and then dissolves into laughter again, at the way his hair sticks up, his lip pushed out, face damp with snow still sliding, melting off of it.

It’s the _whuff_ , the nudge on his back that breaks his gaze, and he tears his eyes away, taking a firmer grip on Roach’s reigns and leading her out into the snow, turning north, away from the laughter behind him—

“Hey!” 

_Hey!_

He stops, looking back over his shoulder, watching the girl trudge and wobble and work her way through the snow, feels his feet already getting cold, his cape already burdened by fresh flakes…

But she smiles at him, and it’s wide and white and dimple-cheeked in a way he hasn’t ever seen before and it’s—

Nice _._

She stops a few feet away, panting, her cheeks blotchy from the cold, flushed from exertions and laughter. “What’s it today?”

“Don’t know yet.”

She laughs. “You’ll tell me later?”

 _No_ , he thinks, that sleep potion should be a goodbye gift. _Time to end it_ , he thinks. _Time to leave._ “Sure.”

She grins again, drags her bottom lip between her teeth and nods. “Don’t die.”

He snorts. “I’ll do my best.”

She smiles again, the dimples deep in her cheeks and she nods, laughing, brushing a wet, snow clumped piece of hair out of her face. “Okay.” 

She turns away, looking back once more before she trudges back over to the boy watching, his mouth open, his voice not at all quiet, even though he thinks he means it to be. _That’s the Witcher, right? Iz, you said you’d tell me—_

Roach snorts at him, nudging his shoulder hard enough to jolt it forward and Geralt huffs and rolls his eyes, his breath puffing white in front of him as he turns to grip onto the bit, starting his trek north again. “Don’t look at me like that. She’s just a kid.”

And then the snowball hits the back of his head.

He stops.

Feels the cold already dripping down the back of his neck, feels the melt of the snow easing it’s way down his back…and when he turns, her laughter is already clear and bright like the sun trying desperately to make it through the clouds above them.

He’s sure his face is one that would make most men run, make most men at least a little nervous, (and the boy, he thinks, has the right idea, his eyes going wide before he ducks down in the snow like if he can’t see Geralt, Geralt can’t possibly see him.)

But the girl only laughs, her smile cheeky, her eyes bright—

And Geralt makes a Sign with his hand at his side, biting back the smile that wants to meet hers, and sends a pulse through the snow until a shockwave of fluffy white curves up and over the pair of them and buries them both. Izrie’s laugh twists into a shriek. 

If he smiles, on his way towards the edge of town, there’s no one but Roach to see it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's still pretty slow rolling, but we're probably going to be leaving the brothel in a chapter or two and more characters wills start coming in, also some other POV's! Hope everyone is still enjoying it and I really truly appreciate all the comments, they are incredibly motivating and definitely keep me writing!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm a liar, there's two more chapters at the brothel after this because these two did NOT want to cooperate with me at all and decided this chapter was going to be nothing but fluff. They would not listen or go where I wanted them to go, so you get this fluffy monstrosity of a chapter instead of the more serious one it was supposed to be.  
> I promise the next chapter will be much more serious as we'll be heading towards some confrontations in regards to Chegund.
> 
> C'est la vie. Hopefully the fluff will do for now.

* * *

V

* * *

It’s a cave troll.

A fucking _ice_ troll, to be more specific, he thinks. 

Big, hulking, frozen bastards with none of their more southern cousins brains. Not that trolls had much to begin with, but simple minds are better than no minds.

It’s hard to imagine missing the stilted, simplistic speech of a troll until you’re facing the ice-covered versions that are nothing more than instinct, fear, and hunger.

“You’re awful far from your cave,” he mutters, his breath puffing white in front of his mouth, watching the troll as it lumbers closer, pulling his sword from its sheath with a metallic hiss. “Hate winter as much as I’ve come to, hm?”

The troll grunts, its heavy, rocky brows sinking together, a string of drool slipping out of its mouth as it growls a noise that might’ve meant something if it could speak like any _other_ variety of troll.

“If you’d just head on back up the mountain, we could save each other a lot of time.”

Another grunting, rock-slide sort of growl.

“That’s probably a no, isn’t it?” he huffs and pulls a little vial of Archespore juice and cracks it over the tip of his blade, tilting it to let the thick venom slide along the steel until it’s coated enough to glisten and shine in the dull sunlight of the late afternoon. “It’s always a no.”

And then the troll lunges.

 _Definitely a fucking no,_ Geralt thinks and throws himself out of the way of the boulder shaped beast, unbuckling his scabbard to fall into the snow behind him; knowing he needs to be as quick as possible, needs to move and keep moving, and in snow this deep…

He curses and ducks a meaty, heavy arm that swings out for him, dragging his sword up and along the softer underbelly of the ice troll, knowing that until the venom takes even a little bit of an effect… all he can do is keep moving and try to not get beaten into a bloody pulp.

The troll grunts, its steps heavy enough the snow-burdened tree branches tremble and shake and rain down more snow around them. The troll swings out again and Geralt ducks behind a tree, slipping around the thick trunk and _just_ ducking as the troll swings again. The cracking, splintering wood chunks rain down around him as the troll smashes through it.

He takes a breath and slips under the ice-tipped arm of the beast, aiming for its belly again before moving out of the way of an enraged howl. The troll lifts its arms, ready to bring them down onto Geralt, a piece of the tree trunk its fist.

“Fuck this winter,” he curses, his breath puffing thick and white in front of him as he feels a splinter from the shattering, cracking apart trunk scrape over his temple.

_Fucking ice trolls._

The heart of Litvogur is dark by the time he gets back, lit only in a few snow-covered and flickering oil-lamps hanging from the outside of some homes.

He wonders, as he leads Roach into the stables, how the fuck Vesemir has made it as long as he has.

He feels old and worn, even though he’s nothing more than bruised and battered from taking a few too many hits from the troll’s icy, rock covered hands. It’s almost embarrassing, he thinks, as his ribs twinge when he unbuckles the saddle, grunting as he hefts it and hooks it over the wood planks that separate the stalls.

“Another two hundred years of this, hm?” he mutters as he turns back to Roach, smoothing a hand along her back, up the thick of her neck. “Think you’re up for it?”

She chuffs. “You’re right. Keep dodging like that and I won’t make it past my first century, will I?”

Another heavy chuff of air, nudging into his shoulder, it jostles his body and he grits his teeth, a rough exhale as his body aches beneath his layers. _“Thanks.”_

For a moment, he considers doing nothing more than dropping down into the hay and giving in to the exhaustion gnawing at him… but there’s blood, sticky and half-dry along the side of his face, and sweat between the layers of his leathers and sticking to his skin. It’s tacky and itchy and he wants to peel out of his clothes and into hot water to scrape a layer or two of his own skin off. (He won’t admit, not even to himself, at least not fully, that he knows it’s later than it should be, far later than he’s ever come back before and he knows there won’t be a bath or anyone waiting.)

 _Idiot,_ he thinks. _Where’s your head, Witcher?_

He strokes her one more time, letting her bump into him again, before muttering a _goodnight, Roach,_ and slipping out of the stall.

He nudges the boy, slumped and snoring near the front of the stables, tossing a few coins at him to brush Roach down more thoroughly than he has energy for. The boy grumbles, sleepily moving towards the stall, already pocketing the coin.

He stays an extra moment, to make sure he hears the sound of the bristle brush moving over Roach’s hide before heading back out into the cold and towards the brothel.

Bled of adrenaline, stepping back into the cold feels like an open-handed slap against every bit of skin the cold can get at. The trek to the brothel feels longer than it should, longer than he thinks is possible until he comes to that yellow-tinted glow of firelight that spills out of frosty, snow-drift covered windows and turns the snow gold; until the one light hanging above the brothel door beckons him inside and into the heat.

The first push of heat against his body makes his skin burn, pushing through the layers as he crosses the brothel floor, already making him sticky with sweat again, like the salt froze and then melted between cloth and skin and leather. 

The barman glances up and then tilts his head towards the barrels of ale behind the bar with an unspoken question, but Geralt shakes his head and the man goes back to work without another word.

He isn’t sure what time it is, late enough there’s only a few women and men lingering in lazy or drunken laps, a few more brothel workers grouped together, lounging by the fire with their own drinks, having no customers to spend the night with.

His boots thud on the stairs, and a door creaks open ahead of him, laughter spills out, tipped in sex and alcohol as a man slips out of the room, an ale jug in his hand, his eyes ringed in kohl and his trousers loose on his oil-sheened hips, still unbuttoned.

“Witcher,” he grins and then smoothly, if not a little _too_ loosely as he slides down the hallway towards the bar. Geralt doesn’t need to look into the room to see the couple left in the bed, can hear the off-rhythm beating of their pulses, the wafting smell of sex and cum and a woman’s slick-thighed pleasure.

He breathes out and doesn’t inhale again until he’s crested the next set of stairs.

And he isn’t sure, exactly, how to label the feeling inside of him that surges after the first instinct of paranoia and suspicion when he registers the sounds in front of him. But the gut reaction to draw his sword falls quickly into

_This fucking girl._

There’s the faintest crackle of a fire, the smell of wood-burning in a room that should be, by now, long since gone cold and dark. And he knows, as soon as he focuses on it and not on ignoring all the other smells and sounds around him, the steady, slow trip of a little girl’s heart.

_Izrie._

Who pushes up from the other side of the tub in a too-quick rush of skinny limbs, her hair loose and somehow messier than he’s ever seen it before, glows in an off-gold halo around her head as he steps into the room.

There are a hundred things that pile into his mind at once: that he should discourage her, that she’s getting too bold, that he’s getting too fucking _soft,_ that there’s nowhere she should be _less_ than here with him—

His mouth opens as Izrie rounds the tub, her eyes all wide and dark and filled up with something that makes his jaw snap shut and his teeth clench. (Because there’s water in the tub, a tray of food that’s long since gone cold, an ale jug, and the girl, of course, all waiting for the Witcher to make his way back from hunting monsters.)

He isn’t entirely sure what that feeling in him is, something itchy and watched, something… uncomfortable. Sweat, he thinks, and snow-damp clothes. Dried blood. Exhaustion. A bruised body…

But she’s there in front of him and he watches her press her lips together, watches her eyes sink down as she steps closer, setting her hands to his leathers… and he’s irritated, he’s— _irritated?_ He’s—

Something.

“It’s late,” he pushes out, a rough-edged noise from his throat and tries to catch her hands.

“ _Your late,_ ” she snips, but doesn’t look up at him, bats his hand away and when her fingers tremble just like the sound of her pulse, it catches him off guard and his hand falls away.

Izrie sets her fingers to the buckle that holds his scabbard to his back and the buckle comes loose; the swords clang together too loudly for the quiet between them, and then her arm shoots up and she stumbles into him all between one blink and the next.

He catches her, and he thinks it should be funny, in any other moment, knowing the weight of his swords caught her off guard, but Izrie presses her face into his chest, wrapping her other arm around his middle before he can even really register what happened. Her hand still clenched, white-knuckled on the leather strap; he knows they’re heavy enough it has to be hard for her to hold onto, but she does, even though the rest of her has gone still enough she feels like a statue. (Or not quite, more like that frozen branch that trembled in the echo-thump of the troll’s heavy steps.)

He pushes out a breath, reaching for her hand and the grip she has on the strap. Her face stays buried, pressed against the damp, probably still cold leather, even as he slips it out of her grip and lets it sink to the floor at their feet.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to touch a Witcher’s swords?”

The girl doesn’t move, her face pushed into the dirty leather, a tremble in her body that makes his brows sink together. Staring at the top of her head, his other hand hovers, stuck halfway between her side and her shoulder, ready to move her away from him.

 _I thought—_ she mumbles into his chest, breaks off and pulls in a breath that wobbles just a little at the end… and then pulls back, exhaling hotly, her hands moving to the laces along the side of his leather chest-piece, her eyes cast low, her lashes long and dark over her cheeks.

He can’t look away, even though he feels half like a voyeur, a perverse sort of feeling that he’s seeing things he shouldn’t, even though he’s part of the moment. Even though the fucking _moment_ is about _him_.

Her lashes are just a little bit clumped and damp, and when she lifts her arm, she swipes her wrist across her eye before switching to the other side of his chest, tugging at the laces again.

And all he does is stand there. Fucking _stand there._

The chest-piece comes loose, he leans down a little, without thinking, letting her tug it off his shoulders, steadying herself to try to bear the weight of it until he brings his hands up to help her drop it onto the floor beside them. And again, he thinks, if it were any other moment, it would be almost funny, it probably weighs nearly as much as she does.

But Izrie doesn’t say anything, her eyes still downcast, bringing her hands up to his right bicep, to pluck the laces of the thick leather covering it.

He has no idea what to fucking say either, he realises. _Fucking useless,_ he thinks. _All the mutagens and skills in the world can’t make Geralt a real boy._

“A troll,” he says, rough and low and for some reason, it feels like he hasn’t spoken in days, instead of minutes; his mouth awkward, tongue thick, feels hulking and too large to be standing so close to her. Even as his layers lessen, his right bracer joining the pile on the floor.

“An ice troll. You know about those?”

Izrie shakes her head and sniffs, her fingers moving slowly but steadier, on his left bracer.

“No men spinning tales about fighting trolls?”

Her lips twitch.

He grunts, “Maybe they’re smarter than they look, hm?”

His left bracer lands in the pile, Izrie eyes shift beneath the red-tinted, heaviness of her eyelids. She sniffs again, her fingers come up to the small buttons on his shirt. He thinks to stop her, but he’s watching her mouth, the little twitch in the corner.

“More like they aren’t so stupid to pretend they could take on a troll.”

He huffs, nudging her backward as he feels her knuckles brush his chest, putting space between them and peeling it off before dropping it into the pile. Knowing, distantly, he’s going to regret the pile by the morning.

Izrie looks away as he sets his hands to his trousers, moving towards the bath and kneeling at the edge before sinking her hand into it.

He wonders how long it’s been cold for, how long she’s been waiting, how late he really is… or if it’s so late it’s really just early again.

And _fuck_ , he thinks, _is that why she’s upset?_ Was she fucking worried for _him?_

He stares at the back of her head, caught by the thought before pushing out another breath and clearing his throat. “Most trolls speak, did you know that?”

She shakes her head, her fingers still in the water as he steps in, sinking into the cloudy lukewarm water that gets warmer by the second as the fire flickers and sputters. He glances at it and back to her; he was right then, she does take the heat from somewhere, just like the water. 

The heat warms and soothes the aches and bruises left from the meaty fists and rocky arms of the troll, and he breathes out, tilting his head back against the ledge of the tub as he lets his eyes close for a moment.

“Like drunkards. Or children, maybe. But they speak and can understand simple things.”

“Like that story about the goats?”

He frowns, cracking an eye open at her. “The goats?”

“The three goats that want to cross the bridge? There’s a troll that lives beneath it and they trick him to cross it.”

“…Don’t think I know that one,” he mutters. “You’ll have to tell me sometime.”

Izrie blinks, and her smile is slow but full-up of something so _pleased_ it twists into his stomach like a knife. 

But it isn’t until she nods, her teeth sinking into her lip as she drops her chin onto her folded arms on the tub ledge, that he thinks about the implication behind his words; that there will be more time than this, some undefined time, _another_ time for her to tell him a story.

He is an _idiot_ , he thinks. This is why he’s better off just not talking at all. He thinks about taking it back, thinks about telling her what she has to already fucking know… That he isn’t staying. That he _can’t stay._ That the snow will melt, eventually. 

And the Witcher will leave.

But it feels like a theft to steal that little smile, that little spark in her eyes…

Truths are never easy, and this one, he thinks, would be more like a murder than a mercy.

“So,” she says slowly, pulling him out of his thoughts. “An ice troll?”

He nods, sliding a little further into the tub, thinking about bloody swords, about choices, about

_Lesser evils._

He swallows, his voice rough when he finally finds it stuck deep in his throat. “Ice trolls are… nothing like southern trolls. Can’t form a fucking word of Common Speech.”

Izrie laughs, a little sound, her cheek soft on her arm. Geralt feels his own lips twitch, tilting his head back and closing his eyes again, taking a slow breath. “Mean bastards, as dumb as they are big…”

When she slips out, hours later, he’s half sure the sun is about ready to creak over the horizon at any moment… he’s also more than half sure that there’s a sour little pout in her bottom lip as he pushes her towards the door and her own bed.

 _Your own bed_ , he says. _Not mine_.

And then, by the time the door is shut, he’s entirely sure he’s dead to the world before his face hits the pillows.

The sun slips into the room like the cold of the world outside of the brothel; like icy-fingertips on his skin or the sneak of frost along the windows that are frozen at the edges in crawling, intricate patterns. A blue hue spills into the room and pulls him out of a too-short sleep and into the shifting of the mattress beneath him… and a familiar heartbeat that blurs into a familiar smell as a bony knee presses into his ribs.

“I brought breakfast.”

And he can smell that, too, grease and meat still steaming. His mouth waters.

He grunts, throwing his arm over his eyes. “Don’t eat breakfast.”

“What, _ever_ ?” she chirps, like it’s _impossible_ to imagine.

He sighs, shifting his arm enough to peak at her. She blinks at him, doe-eyed with a bare face, and then smiles at him with a smile that’s quick and cheeky, dimpled and hopeful.

He isn’t sure he’s ever even thought the word before, but it slips into his head then and won’t leave. _Cute,_ he thinks, _a stupid, cute smile._

He grunts, hiding his eyes again, even as he feels her hand curling around his forearm. “There’s sausage.”

His stomach growls.

She tugs on his arm. “And _bacon._ ”

He sits up quickly on the next tug and Izrie flops backwards with an _oof,_ he feels his lip tug up, but schools it before she can see it and pushes her towards the other side of the bed with his hand braced wide on her back. “ _Off_ the bed.”

She huffs and rolls, righting herself when she tumbles awkwardly off the other side, brushing her hair out of her face and fixing her dress. Distantly, he’s aware of a difference in her, but it takes him a moment to realise _why_ she looks different. It’s plain, a cotton-like fabric that’s thicker than normal. Her hair is down, not coiled or plaited, just loose and wavy, mussed from her tumble.

She looks like a normal girl, he thinks and hates, more than a little, that it’s a strange sight.

“I thought—” she twists the sheet at the edge of the bed around her fingers. “Chegund’s gone. For a day or two. And I thought… since you haven’t been called on, that you might want— maybe you’d like to play Gwent?”

He stares at her for a beat, watches the flush climbing up her cheeks and the laugh spills out of him, deep and true in a way it rarely is.

_Fucking Gwent?_

“Food first,” he rumbles. “Then we’ll see about cards, hm?”

She smiles.

“What’s Rivia like?”

Izrie stuffs a piece of chicken into her mouth, sitting cross-legged on the table, picking at the platter of their dinner sitting between them while Geralt sits in the chair, tilting back on two legs and licking his own fingers clean.

“Why?” he asks, lifting a brow.

She frowns, reaching for another chunk of meat. “It’s where you’re from, isn’t it? _Geralt of Rivia._ ”

He tilts his head back, rolls it along his shoulders, but it doesn’t take him as long as he thinks it _should_ before he’s speaking again. “…I’m not.”

Izrie pauses, her thumb tip in her mouth, catching the grease before wiping her hand on a bit of cloth napkin. “You’re not?”

He shakes his head, lifting his hand, he waits for Izrie to pass him the mug of ale he’s been letting her drink from… as asking for two mugs in a room with only one occupant would look strange. To say the least.

“Witchers pick their own names. They say it makes us more… human.”

She frowns. “Human?” her eyes dart over his face, her eyes dark as she looks at him, filled with something surprised and sad and… something. The question sits between them like a bruise. That knowledge that more than likely, neither one of them are entirely human.

He isn’t sure what she is, but _human_ is probably the last thing he’d call himself.

“So, you don’t know where you’re from?” The _either_ hangs at the end of her question, unspoken but there, waiting to be poked at like the bruise of their undefined humanity.

He shakes his head, taking a too large mouthful of ale, tilting the mug to block his view of her for a moment.

He isn’t sure why he told her.

He isn’t sure why it matters.

He isn’t even fucking sure how they’ve spent the whole fucking day together, save for her slipping out of the room to make sure no one was suspicious of where she was and to get a pair of dice after they’d gotten bored of fucking _Gwent_.

When he swallows, his chair _thunks_ down as he sets the mug on the table, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Kaer Morhen. Born, _made,_ whatever you want to call it. Everything else is just a sales pitch.”

“A sales—” Izrie blinks, her head tilting, looking him over like she’s debating something. A little frown on her face that he can’t quite make sense of… and then she smiles, it misses the mark on being a true smile, but he isn’t quite sure what it is. _Quiet_ , he thinks. “It’s not always so bad, not knowing where you’re from.”

He catches her eyes, his brows lifting like, _is that right?_

Her smile gets a bit more honest as she turns and slips off the small table, the mug sloshing dangerously before she grabs it as it wobbles on the tabletop, taking a too long swallow he frowns at her for when she hands it back to him.

She smiles again and it’s a bit truer still.

“You can be anything you want if you don’t know where you’re from,” she says and then tilts her head, wrinkling her nose, adding: “Or _what_ you are.”

His mouth twitches. “And what are you then?”

“A princess, of course,” she starts, her smile cheeky in her flushed face, her eyes bright. “Don’t all girls want to be princesses?”

He snorts. “I’ve met princesses who wanted nothing less.”

“Because they’ve never been brothel girls,” she says like it’s _obvious._ “But if you could choose between pretty skirts or…” she edges the bottom of her dress up, her feet bare, her ankles skinny and bony and pale. Geralt tilts his brows at her and she drops them again, laughing. “ _Lifting_ your skirts… then I’d imagine most would choose to be a princess, wouldn’t you?”

He huffs, scratching his jaw, the stubble on it that’s getting too long. “Don’t think I’d make a good princess… don’t have the shoulders for pretty dresses, hm?”

She laughs, stepping forward, her hand reaching out for his shoulder, poking at it and tapping it with her hand while she tilts her head, eyes narrowing like she’s considering it. “ _Maybe_ ,” she drawls, but her fingers slip upwards, plucking a few strands of his hair. “But your hair is plenty pretty enough. We could braid it and see?”

He snorts, tilting his head so his hair falls from her loose hold, but his lips quirk up on their own. “Not sure I believe you want to be a princess.”

She laughs, stepping away again, glancing at his swords, laid out on the floor to make room for their meal. She reaches down and Geralt makes a warning sound in his throat, but she smiles at him, one dimple deep in her cheek as she picks it up, two-handed, because it’s too heavy for her, her nose scrunching as she tries to steady it, but the tip keeps slumping closer and closer towards the floor.

“Careful,” he says, and even though it’s tinged deeper with humour, he tries to keep his face stern.

“A hunter, then?” she says, her arms trembling with the effort, her face focused on the sword still sagging in her arms, lower and lower towards the floor. “A sword for hire. Like you.”

He huffs. “Like me? You going to be a Witcher, girl?”

“You think Kar… Kaer Morhen will have me?”

He shakes his head, his lips curling up. “Maybe to fill the tubs.”

The sword tip _plunks_ into the wood and Izrie frowns at him, pushing out her bottom lip. “That’s mean.”

“I’m not very nice,” he drawls, leaning back in his chair and stretching out his legs, holding the ale mug loose on his lap. “Neither is Kaer Morhen.”

She steps forward, and the sword is nearly as tall as her, he realises, as she sets her hands over the pommel, watching the tip dig into the wood. “I don’t need to be nice. I’ve been plenty nice all my life. It’s not all that it’s cracked up to be, honest.”

He snorts, hiding his smile in a mouthful of ale.

“A sorceress then?”

Her nose curls up, pulling a face. “No. I wouldn’t want to be dressed up my whole life.”

“Dressed up?”

She nods, the sword sings a little metallic hum as she spins it, then steps back, her fingers spread wide, hand hovering near it, leaving the sword to spin on its own.

The fire crackles and shivers. “I’ve seen a few sorceresses come through here— well, Litvogur, not the brothel,” she says, her eyes on the sword, her fingers twitching and making it spin a little faster. “And Chegund— I mean, everyone says how perfect they are, right? They always _look_ so perfect, anyway. Like they’re dolls come to life. I don’t want to be pretty my whole life.”

“Easy to say when you already are, isn’t it? I think most who choose The Brotherhood aren’t so lucky.”

The sword wobbles and sways like a spinning-top coming out of its spin, and Izrie stumbles to catch it— Geralt twitches forward, his heart jumping into his throat— but her magic catches it first and she looks up at him, her cheeks red, her smile embarrassed and quick, taking hold of it and setting it carefully on the floor. It’s almost funny watching her lay it flat, two-handed, the metal scrapping the wood floor, but she’s standing again and her hand curls into the drape of her dress along her side and his words hang between them. Sit in the pink of her cheeks. In the glance at him under her lashes.

 _Shit_ , he thinks and lifts the ale, swallowing a too-large mouthful to avoid looking at her. Or saying anything else fucking _stupid._

When he lowers it, swallowing the too-large mouthful that almost hurts to get down, Izrie laughs, stepping up to his side and grabbing the ale and stealing her own mouthful, her eyes bright, her smile a thing she’s trying to hold back but can’t quite manage, he can tell.

All because he accidentally called her fucking _pretty._

 _You’re a fucking fool, Witcher,_ he thinks but can’t think of a fucking thing to say, or how to take his words back without being cruel.

And he finds, somehow, even though he should, he doesn’t want to be cruel to her.

And she has to know it’s the truth, anyway; she _is_ pretty. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a simple fucking fact no different than the colour of his eyes or the too flat edge of her ears.

“I’d be an _actress,_ ” she says after another mouthful, wiping her mouth before she gives him a wide smile with something mischievous in the dimple he only has a moment to wonder at before she’s turning and fake fainting into his lap with an over-dramatic sigh.

Her hand goes to her forehead, the ale sloshing dangerously in her other hand as Geralt catches her, gripping the table edge, his forearm against her back.

“The finest actress on the Continent,” she sighs with a put-on breathy pitch.

“Is that right?” he laughs, can’t stop it from spilling out, hates the way she lights up at it, grinning up at him from her angle over his legs before righting herself, perched on one of his thighs.

“Then I could be a princess and a sorceress and a witcher, too. I could be everything and anything I wanted. A boy, even. I could do it. I’d cut my hair and wear wigs for whatever I fancied to be that day.”

“I’m not sure it works like that.”

“How do you know? Have you been to a lot of plays?”

He shakes his head. “No. But I’m sure they act one play for many months. Have you?”

“Been to many plays?” Izrie shakes her head, curling her arm over his shoulder, turning in his lap to face him a bit more, he thinks she’s definitely had too much to drink, her cheeks pink, her eyes a little too bright and shiny, maybe. “I’ll change it. Something new every day. I think I’d make a fine actress.”

Unwanted, the memory of her on Chegund’s lap comes to mind, her smile, given only when it was required. The way the man seemed so sure, later, so sure that the girl he thought of as his was still his and his alone. That she wouldn’t ever touch the witcher in residence.

“You think I could do it?”

_He hasn’t tried anything, has he?_

_What, no. Don’t be— I wouldn’t._

_I know you wouldn’t, darling. but men like him…_

Her smile dies slowly, he sees it as he’s easing her off his lap, not pushing her away, he reasons, just… _away._ From him.

 _What the fuck am I doing,_ he thinks, they’re too close, _he’s_ too close—

He pushes up to his feet, stepping around her, and frowning at nothing, but Izrie’s hand circles his arm and tugs back to stop him. She steps in front of him, her hand bracing on his ribs just for a moment before she pulls her hand back like she knows she _shouldn’t_ have touched him; her head tilted up, her face twisted with— something.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean— I know you don’t want— I was just having fun. I’ll— I’ll go. I’m sorry.”

She starts to turn away and he isn’t sure he’s really thinking it through before his hand is out, curling around her forearm, but it’s in his head now, what her life is outside of this room. That she isn’t just a dimple-cheeked fifteen-year-old girl having a bit of fun, isn’t just a girl that pours baths with her little bits of magic—

(She’s terrible at gambling with dice, even just with fake coins she twisted out of wood chips that still gave slivers and didn’t shine quite right. But she’s more than decent at Gwent and might be more competitive than fucking Lambert. Hells, maybe even Yennefer.)

But she’s also a girl made to fit the eyes and hands of a man who knows he’s all she has. The only fucking _thing_ she knows. A girl squeezed into a role that chafes her, binds her, no different than the dresses the man puts her in, ill-fitting, inappropriate, made for a fucking sick little fantasy and not the reality of her.

It’s reason enough for her, he thinks, reason enough for her to want to escape, even for a moment, what’s expected of her outside of this room.

But what’s his? What excuse does he have? What reason to keep her?

 _Fucking keep her?_ He wonders if the troll hit him harder than he thought, if it jostled, bruised, fucking knocked something loose in his head. 

If he’s dead and bloody in the snow and all of this is just a death-throe fantasy haemorrhaging in his mind.

 _No_ , he thinks, _there’s no keeps in this life._ But his hand is on her arm anyway, and he thinks, now’s the moment, the stretch of a body before a final blow, between ending a life or sparing it.

(He thinks to end it, to tell her to go, that he doesn’t want her here, that it’s been nothing more than a bit of pity and a way to pass the time.)

But none of that’s true.

Izrie steps forward, pressing her forehead into his ribs, her heart is unsteady and he thinks she’s holding her breath, poised on the edge, like the blade in the floor, spinning and spinning—

He has no excuses, he thinks, no reasons, no explanation for it, but it’s his reality all the same.

When his hand finds the back of her neck, cupping the thin of it beneath the soft of her hair, Izrie breathes out, low and warm and just a bit uneven, her whole body easing.

“Can I stay?”

Somehow, even though it’s nothing more than the little uptick of her heartbeat, he knows she doesn’t mean for right now, that the _stay_ means longer than an hour or two more.

But he finds himself saying _yes,_ all the same.

It’s awkward at first, the— the fucking _domesticity_ of the moment; the brothel is in full swing below them but in the room… in the room, he tosses her one his shirts and she swims in it, but she’s laughing at the size of it, pulling at the sides like it’s the funniest thing to her, _practically a dress,_ she laughs before slipping between onto the bed and pulling the front of his shirt over her knees and hugging them, waiting.

And watching him, he knows, as he strips his shirt off and tosses it towards the chair.

He slips in next to her and it’s only a heartbeat, a too-loud beat of her heart or his or a fucking thump of someone fucking in another room, he isn’t sure, and Izrie slinks lower in the bed, almost hesitantly like she isn’t sure what she can get away with. How much he’ll _let her_ get away with.

 _Too much,_ he thinks. _Fucking apparently._

She rolls onto her side, her heart beating through the back of her shoulder and into his chest, reaching for his arm and curling it over her body like a blanket… or like a stuffed toy, hugged to her chest.

He pulls the covers higher over them both and for a while, all he can focus on is her heartbeat, but by the time the fire is nothing more than slowing licks of a dying, dull orange light, her grip on his arm is nothing more than a loose hold and her breathing is slow and steady and sleep-deep.

He isn’t sure how long he’s awake for, long enough the brothel grows quiet again… long enough that she rolls in her sleep and tucks her face into his neck and still he doesn’t move away, even though he knows he should.

Long enough, that somewhere in between her kneeing him in the ribs and then somehow pressing closer still...

he falls asleep.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much fluff. Gross.
> 
> (and just to clarify some comments on the last chapter. Absolutely nothing sexual will happen between them until Izrie is older. Even though Izrie might display moments of wanting Geralt, it's not at all sexual on his side. Not for a while.)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also here: yourwinedarksea.tumblr.com
> 
> Please comment of you're interested in reading more!


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